by A. T Brennan
“About four months after we started dating he got a job offer at a bigger hospital in a different state. It was more money, more prestige and had better resources. He told me that he wasn’t good at long distance relationships. He didn’t want to lose me, so he asked me to move with him.”
“And you did?” he asked gently when she paused.
She nodded. “I gave up everything—my apartment, my job, the few friends I did have, and I went with him. It was like a fairytale. The big fancy house, the luxury car, the great neighborhood, and everything that I never had and never thought I could have. He didn’t want me to work. He said he wanted to take care of me, but really he just wanted ‘Holly Housewife’ at home to take care of things for him while he worked, and he wanted to isolate me. I lived in a million dollar home, but because I didn’t have a job I had no access to money. If I wanted anything I had to ask him, get his permission. Pretty much as soon as we moved there the ‘romance’ stopped. No more dinners or gifts or anything. He spent so much time at work and at functions and networking that I was alone in the house most of the time.”
“Was that when he started hitting you?” he asked when she paused. He didn’t need her to tell him she’d been abused. He could see it in her eyes and her mannerisms.
She looked up at him and sighed.
“Not then. At first he just yelled at me. He would get so angry, the littlest thing would set him off and he’d fly into rages. Everything was my fault. He would call me names, tell me I was stupid, frigid, ugly, fat…basically he threw every insecurity I had right back at me. He would shove me, grab my arm and yank me around, and he threw things near me, but the first time he hit me it was because I burned the meatloaf. He came home and I was trying to figure out what to make him but he just flipped out. I expected him to yell at me, I expected him to call me names and get angry, but I never expected him to give me a black eye.”
He looked at her and let her continue.
“He said he was sorry, said he loved me and that his anger just got away from him. He promised he would never do anything like that again, and I stupidly believed him. Three weeks later he tried to put my head through a mirror for breaking a wineglass.” She shook her head slightly and lifted her hair away from her temple while turning to show him.
He could see a thick scar spider-webbing through her hair, starting above her temple and disappearing just past her ear.
“Again, he told me he was sorry. That he loved me and he’d never hurt me again. This time I didn’t really believe he would never hurt me, I just believed that he loved me, and no one else ever would.”
He looked at her closely and could see there was something else there.
“What else did he do to you, Kenzie?”
She just shook her head and bit her lip.
“Kenzie?” he asked gently. “You can trust me.”
He could see how much she was struggling and he wanted to put her at ease. He had a pretty good idea what she was going to say, and he hoped for her sake that he was wrong and she hadn’t been assaulted in that way.
He didn’t know if talking about it would help or make things worse for her, but he knew from personal experience that sometimes you just had to let the entire story out and feel everything at once. If you held part of it back then that part would fester and torture you.
She looked at him and then looked back down at her hands for a moment before taking a deep breath.
“Six months after we moved he came home one night. He was so angry that he cracked open a six pack and just started ranting. An hour later the six pack was gone and he was drunk. I left, and went to bed before he could start swinging. I thought he’d either burn himself out or pass out, but he didn’t do either. He followed me into the bedroom and grabbed me. I told him no, I shoved him and tried to fight, but he was too strong.”
“He raped you?” he asked softly when her voice cracked and she had to stop for a moment.
She nodded and looked away. “He just left after. Went into the next room and that was that. He never mentioned it and never apologized. I thought maybe he’d been so drunk he didn’t realize what he’d done, but then three weeks later he did it again, stone sober.” She rubbed her eyes and shook her head, as though she was trying to shake the memories. “He broke my arm while he was pinning me down and when he was done he just rolled over and went to sleep like nothing had happened.”
“And you didn’t leave him?”
“I couldn’t.” She shook her head again and started rubbing her wrist so hard the skin turned red. “Even after all that I couldn’t leave. Every time he hit me, every time he would force me, I would think about leaving but never could do it.” She bit her lip and started twisting the skin on her wrist.
He reached out and put his hand over hers, stopping her as he tried to offer her some comfort, and a distraction from hurting herself.
She looked up at him with haunted eyes, her hand gripping his almost convulsively.
“How long were you with him?”
“Almost five years,” she said softly. “For nearly five years I put up with it.” She closed her eyes and he gripped her other hand in his, squeezing to try and anchor her so she could get the rest of the story out.
She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. “I never understood how women could stay in an abusive relationship for even a minute, let alone years. I thought it was so simple—you love someone so you don’t hurt them. If they hurt you, then they don’t love you so you leave, simple. I used to think these women were so stupid and they deserved it for staying. I never even believed that battered wife syndrome was real. I thought it was an excuse for women to get out of prison sentences. I thought they were using PTSD to try and get away with their actions.”
“But you did leave him, right?” He held her hands tightly and pulled her so she was facing him and had to look him in the eye. “You got away from him.”
“I didn’t leave him, he went to jail,” she said as she looked at him. Her eyes were so open and filled with anguish he wished he could take her pain away.
“What happened?”
“A year and a half into the relationship I found out he was having affairs, lots of affairs, and had been the entire time we were together. At first it was devastating and it crushed my self-esteem, but then I was actually grateful. If he was putting all of his time into them then he wouldn’t have time to notice me. If he was seducing and sleeping with them then he would leave me alone. It didn’t really work that way, but it was a way to rationalize yet another way he hurt me.”
“What happened, why did he go to jail?” he prodded, squeezing her hands when he felt them shake and start to sweat slightly. He needed to help her stay grounded and not give into the panic and fear she was experiencing.
“He took something of mine,” she said after taking a deep breath. “One of the only things in the world that meant something to me. He took a necklace that had been my grandmother’s, and he gave it to one of his mistresses. With all the money he had, he took something that was mine and gave it to another woman. I snapped and I confronted him. He wasn’t used to me standing up to him and he flew into a rage and attacked me. Someone walking their dog heard me screaming through an open window and they called the cops. When they arrived they arrested him.”
“What did he do to you, Kenzie?” he asked as he squeezed her hands again. He could see she was struggling, her breathing was picking up and her hands were shaking in his.
“He beat me, badly. He broke three ribs, cracked a vertebrae, bruised half my internal organs, broke my nose and four bones in my face. Then he stabbed me with a kitchen knife. He cut me four times.” She closed her eyes and gripped his hands so hard her fingers turned red and her knuckles turned white. “He was a surgeon so he knew exactly where to cut and how deep to go to cause the most amount of pain with the least amount of blood loss. He wasn’t trying to kill me. He was trying to punish me.”
He gave her a second to compose herself, and when she op
ened her eyes he could see they were shining with tears.
“When I got out of the hospital I left. I picked a city at random and moved here to start over again. I changed my name and I’ve been trying to forget about him ever since.”
“How long ago was this?” he asked as her grip on his hands slackened but she didn’t let go.
“Five years ago,” she said as she blinked her tears back. “I’ve been away from him longer than I was with him, but he’s still in my head. I still hear his words. I still feel his hands, and I still live in fear.”
“Was he convicted?”
“On a few counts of assault, but with no documented history of abuse nothing but the charges from that one night stuck.”
“But your injuries, the scar on your head? What about all of that?”
“He was a doctor. He treated most of my injuries himself. The ones that needed to be seen were covered up at the hospital. He paid cash, the records were taken care of and none of his colleagues talked or backed up my story so there was no proof.” She shook her head and gripped his hands again. “He got five years.”
“When did he get out?”
“Two years ago. His sentence was reduced for good behavior,” she said bitterly. “I know that he’s out there but I have no way of knowing if he’s still angry at me, if he blames me for what happened. He lost everything when he went to prison, and if he blames me, if he’s still after me—”
“Hey, hey,” he said gently as he cut her off and shook her hands slightly, trying to shake her free from the panic. “He’s not here. He can’t hurt you anymore, Kenzie.”
She just looked at him and bit her lip.
“Is that even your name?” he asked with a grin. “You said you changed your name.”
“Sort of,” she said with a small smile. “My last name was Mackenzie.”
“What’s your real name?”
“Serena Mackenzie.”
“Where did Smoak come from? Just a cool name?”
“It was my grandmother’s maiden name.” She sighed and shook her head. “Serena Mackenzie died the night I got four new scars, and I became Kenzie Smoak. I’m trying to let go of every part of her, but the fear is the hardest thing to let go of.”
“It always is,” he said seriously. “Fear is the most powerful of all responses. Love and hate can be the biggest motivators, but fear can paralyze you. It can take away everything, and it can reduce you to nothing but a shell of what you once were. Fear can destroy you, but it’s one thing you can get past.”
“How?” she asked softly.
“You have to figure out a way to let it go, to stop being afraid of the thing that’s controlling you.”
“How do you do that?”
“I’ll let you know if I ever figure it out,” he said softly as he gave her hands a gentle squeeze.
“You’re a good person, right?” she asked as she held onto his hands and looked up at him.
“I’ve done some terrible things,” he said honestly. “I don’t think anyone could consider me a good person anymore.”
“You might have done things. You might have been in situations where you wish you could take something back or that you had done something different, but I’m not talking about being at war,” she said softly. “I mean you, Tyler, you’re a good person.”
“I used to be. I wish I still could be,” he said slowly.
“You won’t hurt me, right?” she asked as she stared into his eyes. “I haven’t trusted anyone since I started my life over again, not really, but I’m trusting you. You won’t hurt me again, will you?”
“I won’t hurt you, Kenzie.” He shook his head. “Not again.”
She just squeezed his hands and nodded, a look of calm and composure beginning to come over her face.
“Thank you,” she said softly as she looked at him.
“I didn’t see any scars on you. I wasn’t exactly looking that night, but I didn’t see any.”
“It was a sharp knife,” she said with a sigh as she pulled her hands from his. She shifted back so she was leaning away from him and pulled up her shirt so it was above her breasts.
“This was the first one. It punctured my lung” She lifted her right breast, pulling the material of her bra up, and he could see a two inch scar right where her breast and her torso met. “And here.” She pointed to her left side, just above her hip, and he saw a slightly longer scar, but it was faint. “This one hit nerves in my back, made it so I couldn’t fight. The other two are a little hidden.”
“Hidden?”
She drew in a deep breath and stood up. She pointed to her inner thigh, only a few inches from the apex of her legs. “This was the biggest. It bled the most.” She took another deep breath and then pulled down the top of her pants and underwear so he could see all the way down to her pubic bone. It was then he saw a thick scar right over the bone that ran right across the whole area and halfway to each hip. It actually looked like there were two scars right on top of each other. He was amazed that he’d missed it during their night together, it was very noticeable now that she’d pointed it out. “This was the deepest.”
“Kenzie?” he asked when he saw tears in her eyes. He reached up and grabbed her hands, pulling her down so she was sitting with him again. “Kenzie?”
“Remember I told you how I can’t have kids, that it’s medically impossible for me?” she asked her voice shaking and her face turning red from the effort of not crying.
He just nodded
“The last scar, he punctured my uterus. They tried to save it, but I got an infection and in order to save my life they had to perform a hysterectomy. That was his final fuck you to me. He took away my fertility and my ability to have my own family.”
He just stared at her, his mouth open. He had no idea what to say, what he could say. Instead he pulled her so she was sitting on his lap and held her close, letting her know she could cry and he was there for her.
As he felt her body begin to shake he just gripped her tightly.
How any man could do any of what she’d been through to a woman was beyond him. He might be a bit of a jerk, he might not say or do the right things, and he might hurt someone’s feelings every now and then, but to abuse anyone was not something he could fathom.
The psychological abuse was bad enough; controlling her, beating her down emotionally and using her as a verbal punching bag, but to hit her? To break her bones and bruise her body? He couldn’t imagine ever being angry enough to even think of purposefully hurting anyone who wasn’t his physical match, and never a woman or a child. To cut her, to purposely cause her pain with a knife and destroy her body so she couldn’t have kids was just evil; and to rape her… it was beyond him.
He couldn’t understand how anyone would want to be with someone who wasn’t an active and willing participant. He knew rape wasn’t about sex, it was about power, but why would anyone want to have that kind of power over someone? He’d heard guys bragging about the chicks they’d banged at parties, and there was a stark difference between a sloppy drunk lay and screwing a girl who wasn’t able to consent or participate, but the amount of guys who didn’t seem to see that difference was disgusting.
Sex was great, good sex was awesome and bad sex wasn’t so awesome, but an imagination and a hand went a long way when there was no one to do it with. In his mind there was no gray area. She was either into it or she wasn’t, and if she wasn’t then you shifted gears, got control over your body and stopped. There was no point of no return and he’d been in a few situations where a girl was happy and willing but then pulled away either because she just wasn’t feeling it or she was a little too drunk. It had been very frustrating, but it hadn’t made him angry, and it certainly hadn’t made him think to just keep on going.
Maybe it was the marine in him, maybe it was the man in him, but he felt that everyone deserved to be protected—woman, man or child, and if someone needed help you helped them. No one deserved to be hurt and everyone dese
rved to be free. It was one of the reasons he’d enlisted, to help and to fight for his country, to serve everyone whether they agreed with what he did or not.
He shifted his grip on her and gently stroked her hair as he held her. It didn’t seem as though she was still crying, but her body was stiff in his arms and he wanted to help her relax, and to let her know she was safe with him. He might have been an ass that first morning, but he would never betray her trust, and he would never physically hurt her.
Chapter Ten
Kenzie couldn’t believe she’d told Tyler so much, and had shown him her scars. She’d never talked to anyone about any of this before, and she’d dumped pretty much every demon she had on him in the three days they’d spent together. She’d never trusted someone so completely, and she’d never felt connected to someone like she felt connected to him, but it couldn’t be real.
He was everything that she wasn’t. He was strong and confident and capable, and handsome. He came from a good family, he’d served his country, and he was brave. Even though he could be a bit of an ass, he was still kind and caring.
She knew it was the emotional aspect of how they’d met that was prompting the trust between them. She knew that if they hadn’t been at that convenience store at the same time as the robbery he could have passed her a dozen times in the street and never looked twice at her. She knew that even if he’d come to the hospital and she’d treated him, he would have forgotten about her the moment he left.
She knew all of that, but she also knew that she would have noticed and remembered him, and not just because he was so handsome. There was something about him that drew her in. She could tell he had his own issues and he was dealing with his own demons, and that’s why he had the attitude that he did. He kept people out by keeping them at arm’s length.
She was the opposite. She was just afraid of everything. She was afraid of letting people in, but she didn’t push them away. She ran from them. She was shy and self-conscious, and she was always worried that she was going to do or say the wrong thing, that she was reading situations wrong, and she was a burden. She let her fear and her anxiety rule her life, and she was sick of it.