He shook his head and grabbed a crate. “Where are you renting space from then?”
“The commissary.”
He turned to Wyatt, not giving my answer a response. “Thanks for helping, man. I owe you.”
There was a weird beat of silence where Wyatt and I simultaneously wondered why Killian owed him. Wasn’t it me Wyatt did the favor for?
“It’s no problem, Chef,” Wyatt shrugged. “I’ll just head back. Who’s in charge now?”
“Kaya, but take over when you get there.”
“She’s going to be pissed.”
“Who cares,” Killian shrugged. “I told her you’d be back. Don’t let her give you any shit and make sure she stays on track. I’m not dealing with her temper tantrums, yeah?”
“Got it.” Wyatt swallowed thickly which made me think he was more nervous about standing up to Kaya than he wanted Killian to believe.
“And, Wyatt?”
“Yes, chef?”
“Don’t fuck anything up.”
Wyatt gulped for the second time. “Yes, chef.”
Killian jerked his head toward the door, and Wyatt dropped the rag on the counter and backed away. “See you around, Vera.”
“Thanks again,” I told him quickly. “I really appreciate you showing up when you did.”
His eyes flashed with concern and his mouth pressed into a frown. He hadn’t asked any questions about Derrek, and I was grateful for that. But looking at him now I could tell he was worried about me. I just didn’t have anything to tell him.
I was worried about me too.
He lifted a hand in a lazy wave and disappeared out the door.
I turned away from Killian and focused on the closing tasks. “I just need to shut everything down, then I’m ready to go.”
He didn’t say anything, so I went about double checking everything was off, closing the windows and locking everything up. It was a twenty-minute routine that got tedious, but Killian didn’t complain.
When I was finished, he picked up two crates of food, one on top of the other, and headed down the steps. I grabbed the remaining crate and followed him.
He hovered over me while I set mine down again to lock the outside door. “Thanks for staying with me,” I told him in a voice just barely above a whisper.
“Derrek Hanover is your ex-boyfriend? The one that drove you to Europe?”
Well, he didn’t waste any time.
I knew he would have questions. What was worse, I knew he would want answers. My days of dodging the whole truth and nothing but the truth were over.
But, damn, I wasn’t ready for this.
I also wasn’t ready to see Derrek again, but apparently I didn’t get to pick and choose my problems.
“Derrek Hanover is my ex-boyfriend,” I confirmed. I swooped down and picked up my crate. It was easier to talk about this if I didn’t have to look at Killian or acknowledge his existence altogether. I led him into the alley and toward my car.
“Europe?” Killian pressed, not giving me any wiggle room.
“He didn’t drive me there. I went. Willingly.” Which made it seem like I was the flighty one. I had no idea why I was still covering for Derrek. Four months ago, when I’d gotten back, I’d convinced myself I could talk about my relationship with him. I’d promised that I wouldn’t bury everything. But the words were so difficult to spit out.
My shame was too great to admit. Especially to someone like Killian who would never let anyone intimidate or abuse him. And sure, he was a man, so the chances of that happening were minuscule. But it was more than that. It was his personality. He didn’t put up with shit from anybody.
We reached my Taurus after a minute of tense silence. After enough nights of loading and unloading, I had the keys and trunk situation down to a science. Still balancing my crate packed with food, I unlocked the trunk and unloaded mine and then one of Killian’s.
“The other one is going to have to go in the back seat.”
He followed me to the side and slid it in. He stayed quiet the entire time.
His silence became a tangible thing in the air, heavy, dangerous and confusing. It was like he was mad at me for being involved with Derrek. And okay, I was mad at me too, but I didn’t get it coming from him.
I closed the door and stepped back from him, not sure if I was ready to get into the enclosed space of my car just yet. “Do you know Derrek?”
“Do I know Derrek Hanover?” he repeated, only where my tone had been openly curious, his had an edge. “Yeah, I know Derrek Hanover.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and shuffled my feet, kicking at a small rock. The night air had cooled down, and a refreshing breeze danced in the air. The clear sky allowed the half-moon to glow as brightly as it could, but it was still completely dark. A streetlight on the corner provided only a little light, casting Killian in shadow and hiding his features from me.
There wasn’t an easy response to his biting remarks. I knew Derrek better than anyone. Killian was right not to like him. But this wasn’t one of those situations where I cared about the whys of it. I wasn’t interested in gossiping about my ex.
I just wanted to forget about him completely.
“Well, thanks for helping me close down.” My voice sounded small, hidden behind old fears and fresh shock. “I appreciate everything you did tonight.”
He stared at me for a minute, once again refusing to acknowledge my gratitude. His hand shot out, bouncing with impatience. “Here, I’ll drive.”
“What?”
“Give me your keys. I’ll drive you home.”
My thoughts bumped into each other in their rush to make sense of his offer. “That’s not necessary,” I assured him. “Derrek threw me off, but I can drive myself.”
“You’re shaking,” Killian pointed out. “And you look terrified. Let me drive, Vera, for my own peace of mind.”
“Your bike is here. How will you get home?”
“I’ll take an Uber. Stop worrying about me.”
My hackles raised, the hair lifting off the back of my neck in response to his pushy attitude. “You’re the only one that gets to worry? How are you the boss?”
“I’m the only one stable enough to drive. So, yeah, I get to be boss.”
“I’m fine, Killian.” And because that didn’t sound even the least bit convincing, I repeated myself. “I’ll be fine.”
“Did he hurt you?”
The darkness made the finer edges of his feature blurry, but the fury in his eyes was unmistakable. As was the harsh slash of his mouth and the rigid tension in his shoulders.
Still protecting my past, I tried an easy answer. “I left him, Killian. What do you think?”
He made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat. “Not in the generic sense, Vera. Not in the way that all bad relationships end. I mean, did he hurt you? Put his hands on you? Fucking beat you?”
How does he know? That was my first thought. I didn’t have scars. At least not any on the outside. I had been lucky in that.
And I meant that. As screwed up as it was to associate my relationship with Derrek with luck, I knew I had been. There were women far worse off than I had been. There were women who couldn’t just leave. Who didn’t have a savings account to fall back on. Who couldn’t get out. Who were knocked unconscious regularly—or worse.
When I looked at the grand scope of abused women, my case was mild in comparison to some of the true psychopaths out there.
That in no way made what happened to me okay. But I had perspective. And that was important to me.
“He got physical,” I confessed, my words frail and broken and dragged from the deep recesses of my soul, the place I put things I never wanted to speak about out loud. The things I wasn’t brave enough to face. “He didn’t like, I don’t know, hospitalize me or anything, but he was rough.”
“That fucking piece of shit,” Killian snarled. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. His chest lifted with his effort
to breathe evenly. “What a slimy, lowlife piece of shit.”
I swallowed against the lump of regret lodged in my throat. “How did you know? I mean, how did you guess that he… that he…”
“My friend Natasha dated him for a few months a while back. She didn’t let it get serious, but she told me some things that bothered her.” He turned his head, showing me the full severity of his profile. “And I’ve worked with him before. We kind of, I don’t know, rose in the industry at the same time. I’ve wondered about him. He’s not right in the head, Vera. There’s something seriously wrong with him.”
I laughed, but it was a desperate sound, adrenaline fueled and easily broken. “Oh, I’m well aware.”
“So Europe?”
Hugging myself tighter, the truth spilled out. “I tried to leave him more than once. I did leave him more than once. But I was stupid. I was...” I wiped my nose with the back of my hand, only just then noticing the tears leaking from my eyes. “I had convinced myself that I loved him. And he always convinced me that he would change. Every goddamn time.”
“Tell me all of it. I want to hear everything.”
So I did. While we stood behind my brother’s bicycle shop on a balmy summer night, covered in darkness and tragedy and mutual hate for the man that had hurt me so deeply, I told him every hard detail of the two years I spent with Derrek.
I opened up about how he’d pursued me while I was still in school. I had been enamored with the adjunct professor that was ten years older than me and so incredibly hot. He’d taken the time to invest in my career and skill. He’d helped me become a better chef, a better person. He’d been so attentive and sweet and charming. I didn’t stand a chance.
We started dating my last year. The day I graduated I moved into his apartment. He’d promised all these great things, everything I wanted to hear. He would keep helping me, introduce me to all the important people, get me into the best kitchens. I just needed a little more practice. I needed to establish a reputation first. So why not start somewhere small? Why not just work up slowly, so people didn’t think Derrek was the only reason for my success?
He tore apart my world little bits at a time. He didn’t like when I went home to Durham by myself, and since he didn’t have the time to take off to go with me, I stopped seeing my family. My friends were all so much younger than him. He didn’t have anything in common with them. So why didn’t we just hang out with his friends? Besides, they were connections I could use.
He needed to focus on his career, so I should probably just work part time. That way I could help him reach the next level. After that, he promised to help me. He promised to throw all his resources at helping me move up. Just after he got to where he needed to be first.
After he’d picked apart my life and isolated me from everyone I cared about or knew… that’s when the physical abuse started. Looking back, I realized the emotional and verbal abuse had started way earlier. He’d subtly slipped in his backhanded compliments and carefully woven doubts until my self-esteem had withered and died. I lost my confidence, self-respect and will to fight.
By the time he hit me for the first time, I’d been mostly convinced that I deserved it. It wasn’t until two years later when he told me to quit my job and informed me that I would be staying home full time, that I realized he was going to take away the only thing I had left—my career.
That was the final straw. I should have stood up for my friends. I should have fought like hell when it had been my family. I should never, ever have let him hit me. But it wasn’t until he threatened to take cooking away from me that I couldn’t stand it for a second longer.
Killian had been winding tighter and tighter during my history lesson. His entire body looked ready to explode, a ticking time bomb of vengeance and justice. Beneath the milky moonlight, he was an avenging angel, nothing but hard lines and solid, unflinching resolve. “So you fled the country?”
“It sounds more dramatic than it is. I wasn’t afraid he would hunt me down or anything.” I thought of him outside my food truck refusing to leave. “Although maybe I should have been. But Europe was more about finally doing something for me. Finally, just, I don’t know, crawling out of the hole I’d dug for myself. And cooking. It was a lot about cooking—the one thing I loved enough to protect from him.”
“What do you mean?”
I shook my head, so humiliated… so wholly ashamed. “I couldn’t leave him, Killian. I physically couldn’t. I don’t know what was wrong with me, but I just couldn’t do it. I was afraid, yes, but it was more than that. It was like he had this hold on me that I just couldn’t break. No matter how hard I tried.”
He stepped closer to me, facing me again, watching me so closely I could feel his gaze on my skin, soothing the demons that still haunted me, calming my tattered heart—healing my battered spirit. He understood. “It wasn’t your fault, Vera.”
My eyes slammed shut as more tears poured out of me from a well that was so tainted with hurt and betrayal. Derrek was supposed to be my happily ever after. He was supposed to give me everything I’d always wanted—the blissful relationship, the financial stability, the hand up in my dream job. He had promised me love and given me pain instead. He’d promised me the world and locked me in prison.
I thought he was the answer to every one of my prayers. But he’d turned out to be the devil in disguise, the demon that ate at my soul and destroyed my hope.
But the worst part was that I let him. In my desperation to grasp the things I’d put on such a high pedestal, I’d let him bulldoze me. I hadn’t even put up a fight.
And for that, I blamed myself. More than I blamed him.
Killian’s hand smoothed over my jaw as he cupped my face gently in his overwhelming hands. His calluses scratched along my skin, but his touch was so gentle it made my heart hurt with a longing I couldn’t define. He leaned closer until I could feel his breath on my lips. His beard scratched at my chin, and his scent filled the air around us.
“It’s not your fault, Vera,” he repeated. “You didn’t make Derrek hurt you. He did that. He chose that. He decided to be the evil piece of shit that hits women and uses his size and stature to trap them. He has to answer to that. Not you. Not fucking you. It is not your fault.”
A slow tremble worked its way through my body. It was one part surprise and two parts relief. I hadn’t realized the hold guilt had on me. Or the crippling shackles of blame.
I hadn’t realized I needed to escape that prison as well.
Killian’s grasp tightened on my face, his thumbs sweeping over my cheeks to collect the tears that wouldn’t stop falling. “Tell me you understand. I need you to say the words.”
“I can’t,” I hiccupped. “I want to but I can’t.”
He pulled me against his chest, wrapping his arms around me and holding me against the hard safety of his body. “You can,” he promised. “However you see yourself or remember yourself is a lie. He hurt you Vera, and that is unforgivable. But what you did? Staying? Staying when you couldn’t see a way out, when you lived in fear, when he lied to you over and over and over, that wasn’t wrong. You didn’t do anything wrong. That’s his voice in your head, not yours. He’s still feeding you the lies that kept you trapped for so long. You’re brave. And you’re strong. And you’re so damn resilient. It might have taken you longer than you wanted, Vera, but you did it. That makes you the hero of this story, not the victim. You’re the survivor. You’re moving on.”
I pulled back, opening my eyes to meet his gaze and it was one of the bravest things I had ever done. He held me there, captivated by his faith in me, by the grace and gentleness that was in such contrast to everything else I knew to be true about him. He wasn’t judging me. He didn’t think I was pathetic or weak or used. And he was asking me to see myself how he saw me.
It wasn’t a switch that could be flipped. I didn’t immediately feel like the brave, strong woman he promised I was.
But I took a step in that direc
tion.
“Thank you.” I licked dry lips and pushed through the emotion, trying again. “Thank you for being so kind. For saving me not just from Derrek tonight, but from me.”
His head dipped toward mine, his arms tightened around me. “You still don’t see it. You don’t know how incredibly talented you are. You never needed Derrek to introduce you to anyone. Your food would have done that for you. You didn’t need him to validate you. You didn’t need his approval. You’re brilliant, Vera. So naturally talented, you put me to shame. He saw how utterly precious you were and tried to capture your magic for himself. But he underestimated you. You’re meant for more than him. More than the food truck you’ve sentenced yourself to. You’re meant to shine, Vera. I saw it the first time I met you. You shine so fucking bright.”
He closed the distance between us, pressing a kiss to my cheek. As soon as his lips touched my skin, a shockwave rocked through me. My fingers curled around clumps of his black t-shirt and I tipped into him, our bodies settling against each other as if letting out a satisfied sigh.
I didn’t pull away. I couldn’t. He had given me back a piece of myself that I’d been unable to find. He’d given me a gift that I would cherish for the rest of my life.
His lips lingered on my cheek, brushing once, twice, slowly peppering my cheekbone with the sweetest kisses. I shivered at the gentle seduction of it, the brush of his beard against my face, the fullness of his lips tasting my skin, the salty tears that had only just now stopped falling.
He’d told me I was bright, but not compared to him. He was the sun, and I was a flower turning my face to his heat. He was the stars in the clear summer night sky, and I was the stargazer mesmerized by the mysterious beauty I would never fully understand.
I turned my face toward his, seeking those lips that were driving me crazy. He let out a shaky breath, catching the corner of my mouth as soon as he could reach it.
Someone whimpered, but it couldn’t have been me. I had never made that sound before in my life.
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