“It’s not how you think.”
“I should have known something was wrong!” Josh shouts. “You never opened up to me. You never told me anything about your past or Charlie’s father.”
“I couldn’t … it’s … just … when I got involved with you, I knew your reputation. I was sure you’d have your fun and let me go.”
Josh stops pacing. He’s turned away from me with his arms folded against his chest. His back looks as rigid and straight as iron. “Fine. If that’s what you want, I’ll give it to you. Go.”
I feel my heart shredding inside my chest. If I could find a way to tell him ... a way to explain … even if it’s only in half-truths to protect Charlie. But I don’t know how to keep lying.
“Go on … leave.” His tone is hard and solid.
I’m too scared to tell him the truth. I leave quietly.
I wish I had said no to his job offer, no to the sex, no to the intimacy. But I didn’t. Foolishly, I embraced every part of it.
*****
Charlie stirs next to me as I watch the sunlight peek through the window. I haven’t slept all night. Seeing Josh at work today is going to be hell. Maybe this is my exit cue.
I flip my laptop open and wait for Expedia to load. Two plane tickets. Charlie and I can be out of here in no time.
No time for Josh to look at me with hate and disappointment in his eyes. No time for me to break down and tell him the truth. No time for Charlie to figure out what’s really happening. We’ll get back to the apartment in Williston, I’ll pack up the car and we’ll be gone.
I leave the webpage open, and undecided, I take a hot shower. The water runs over my head and soothes my frazzled mind.
If I leave now, I leave Josh without a massage therapist.
I’ll go to work and give Silva my notice. If Josh doesn’t want me there, which he won’t, Silva can tally up the wages I’ve earned since my last paycheck and cut me a check.
And just like that, Charlie and I will disappear. Again.
I come into The Core with my head down.
“Sophie!” Liam shouts from across the room. I look over long enough to give a short wave. He’s standing by the juice bar. Josh is sitting next to him, but his gaze stays on the counter.
Silva. Just find Silva.
I knock on the door to Silva’s office.
“Come in.”
“Good Morning, Mr. Silva,” I greet him formally.
“Hey, Sophie. What’s going on?” He smiles up from his papers.
“I’m giving my notice. I can leave immediately or stay on for the next two weeks until you find someone to replace me.” I’m monotone.
His smile melts into an angry disbelief. “What the hell did Josh do?”
“He didn’t do anything, I assure you. It’s … family business I have to attend to.” The words kill me.
“I don’t believe it. I’m going to talk to him.” Silva pushes away from his desk and starts to stand.
“Please,” I say, stopping him. “Not … not now.” I rub my hands against my face. “You don’t owe me anything, but I need to ask a favor just the same. Please, just let it go.” I look at him with pleading eyes. “Soon it’ll be like I was never even here.”
He leans against the desk, watching me. “I can only imagine what happened and I’m sorry for it.” He nods. “But I’ll do what you ask.”
“Thank you.” I turn and flee from the office before I cry.
*****
I’m a mess. I’ve stayed hidden in my massage room the entire morning. I’m insane—I’ve gone over every possible scenario for what will happen when Josh comes through that door. I can’t think anymore! My head is throbbing. I’d take Tylenol, but I feel like I deserve the extra agony of a stress headache.
I check the clock. It’s going to be lunch soon.
He’s not coming, I decide, and I leap up from the chair to grab my coat.
At that moment, a knock against the door startles me. “Yeah.”
Josh opens the door and steps in. I take a deep breath, readying myself for whatever comes next.
“Liam says I need to let you explain.”
“Do you do everything Liam tells you to?”
“Only when I know he’s right,” Josh says.
I pretend to busy myself. He wants me to explain, but I can’t do that. I’ve spent the past three years running, and I can’t stop now. I don’t know how. “I really have nothing to say. If you’re ready for your massage we can—”
“My car’s out front. I think you’ll like the countryside, and everything is better during a long drive,” he coaxes me.
“Long drives are for talking, and I already told you I have nothing to say,” I say coldly, hoping to mask the pain in my voice.
“Good,” he shoots back at me. “Then we can find a secluded place to pull off and make love.”
I’m shocked into silence for a moment. We’re fighting! He’s furious with me. The idea of making love somewhere in the winter countryside …
I bust up laughing. Only Josh.
He cracks a huge smile, and just like that, all my defenses crumble.
*****
The SUV he rented is so hot it feels like a sauna. We’ve driven quietly for almost an hour.
“It’s really getting hot in here.” I peel off my coat.
“That’s the whole idea, scrapper,” he says. “To make you naked.”
“Josh …” I start.
He takes a right onto a dirt road. “You don’t owe me anything, Sophie. I have no expectations. I just want to have as much time with you as I can get, whatever that means.”
I don’t know what to say.
He pulls into an old cornfield. The leftover stalks are painted with snow. When he feels confident we’re secluded enough, he parks and turns off the engine, but keeps the music on. He climbs out his door, opens the back and drops the seat.
He has it set up with a soft sheepskin blanket and a bottle of wine with two glasses on a small tray.
“Oh, Josh.” I shouldn’t be here. Why didn’t I say no?
“No strings, scrapper.” Josh moves over the blanket, leans back on his knees and slowly pulls his shirt over his head.
Seeing the flex of his muscle, the flash of his provocative, come-hither smile … yeah, I know I’m crawling back there.
“Come here, baby.” He pulls me into his arms while simultaneously removing my top. Then he sinks his long fingers into my hair and presses his mouth over mine. There’s no hesitation—the kiss is hot and possessive—all tongue and teeth. He bites my bottom lip, pulling it into his mouth at the same time he sinks his hand into my panties and teases me with his fingers.
“Oh, God.” I’m already burning for him. The heat of his touch silences my doubts for the moment, leaves no room for thinking. I can only feel.
He keeps licking and biting my lips while he unfastens my pants and pulls them down to my bent knees. This gives him the access he wants, and he slips a finger deep inside of me. His hands are rough and calloused from his work, and it adds an extra dimension to the sensations my body feels. It’s incredible.
Josh unsnaps my bra and groans as my breasts pop free and are fully exposed. He kisses my chin and licks his way down the bend of my throat. My skin thrills at the feeling, while the blood rushes between my legs. There’s no doubt where his hot, soft mouth is heading. He loves my breasts.
Right before he gets to my nipple, he pulls his hand from my heat, making me whine for its return, and paints my wetness over my nipple before he sucks it between his lips.
I moan, ready and consumed by the flames that are burning inside of me.
“Mmm … I love the way you taste.” His voice is sultry and deep and vibrates through me. “I have something I want to do for you.”
Yes! Right now I’d let him do anything. I need the sensation of his cock inside me, filling me completely, perfectly. He melts me every time he comes between my walls.
“I need to y
ou to lie on your belly and get comfortable,” he instructs. “First have some wine. I’m going to turn on the engine and get the heat going again.”
Josh passes me the long stemmed glass. I need the drink. I’m losing myself in his arms … and I know I want to disappear there. I drain more than half my glass.
“Okay.” I’m not sure what he has in mind, but I lay down like he asked me to.
He’s quiet. It makes me wonder what he’s up to.
The sweet and musky scent of sandalwood fills the vehicle. I hear Josh rubbing his hands together, then feel the heat of his palms, slick with oil, caress the skin of my back.
“I should’ve done this for you a long time ago,” Josh says softly as he strokes the muscles of my back with long, smooth strokes.
He’s giving me a massage? Josh is giving me a massage!
“You’ve taken such good care of me. Thank you.”
His words are an arrow that shoots straight through my heart. As his fingers sink into and knead my sore, tired and tense muscles, a hot violent storm gathers behind my eyes.
I try to blink it away, but I can’t.
The first sob rips through my chest. Josh feels it, and his hands halt.
“Are you alright?”
I can’t breathe! Dear God, it feels like my heart is shredding.
“Sophie.” Josh’s warm, strong hand rests in the center of my shoulder blades.
I shake my head and bury my face further into the soft sheepskin. Nothing will be alright.
“No one has ever given me a real massage like this before. No one’s ever planned something like this out—touched me this way purely out of love.” My voice is muffled. I wonder if he even understood what I said.
“That can’t be true,” he replies.
“It’s true. I swear, it’s true.”
“I’m so sorry, Soph.” He hugs my shoulders in his firm grasp, and I’m thankful for the pressure, because I feel like I’m going to shatter and fly apart.
Slowly, I lift myself until I’m sitting. Josh brings up the sides of the sheepskin and wraps it around me tenderly.
“Loving you and feeling loved back felt so good that I let myself pretend I could have you,” I admit through furious tears. “That I could have a life with you—because even though I should have torn myself away from you, I couldn’t leave. I wanted to be with you.” I hitch in breath. “It’s a long, ugly story that I didn’t think you could understand. And then you confided in me, even when you thought I wouldn’t accept you afterwards … I want to trust you, Josh. I want to trust you!”
“Sophie,”—his voice is gentle—“I’m an asshole. All this time I was waiting for you to tell me about your life, and I knew it wasn’t going to be easy for you, so I didn’t push it. Then, the moment you finally felt secure enough to tell me, I acted like a fucking prick. I’m so sorry, Sophie. Please forgive me.”
Josh kisses the top of my head and breathes into my hair. “You said you were married. It threw me. I love you, Sophie. You can trust in me. I will never hurt you, I swear it. Whatever it is, I’m on your side.”
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Take your time, we have all day and night,” he soothes.
I nod and close my eyes. “My eighteenth birthday was the first time I’d seen my mom since I was fourteen years old. She told me she never wanted to see me again unless … well, I don’t know what made me want to see her. I guess it doesn’t matter how old you are, you always crave your parents’ acceptance, or maybe approval.” I take in a shuddering breath. Josh reaches into the glove compartment and comes back with a pouch of tissues.
“Thanks,” I whisper and blow my nose.
“My mom belongs to a religious cult where her God is more important than her child, and it is righteous and godly to punish that child by isolating her—locking her in a room for days at a time—starving her, hitting her, telling her that because she was bad God is going to get her for it.”
I wipe my cheeks even though I’m still crying. He needs to know about Jim, but he needs to know about my mother first.
“Since I was little, she told me God was going to send birds to eat out my eyes and peck me to death, or take his own hand and simply wipe me clean off the face of the earth. Those are some of my earliest memories, Josh.”
Now that I’ve started, I can’t stop weeping. “When I was fourteen, she told me I was of the devil. I ran away. I lived watching the skies, expecting God’s wrath to pour from heaven at any moment and destroy me. In the meantime, I slept anywhere I could find safety for as long as I could—but places on the streets are anything but safe. After a seriously brutal year and almost being killed, I was picked up by authorities and put into the system. I went through foster homes, group homes, halfway houses, a detention center …” I bury my face in my hands. “I had no dreams or goals or desires. I hated myself, I hated God and I hated my life. I had become a homeless, unloved, unwanted, street tough teenager. After I turned eighteen—old enough to be set free from social services—I got involved with a nice guy from Maine. I lived with him for a couple months. He was good to me, and I started looking toward my future. I got a job and started taking community college courses.”
“I was so stupid that day, driving six hours to see my mother and prove to her I was a good person, that God hadn’t killed me. I mean … what the hell was I thinking? That she’d welcome me back with open arms? That she’d tell me that … she loved me?”
I shake my head. “Anything good I’d achieved up to that point was obliterated once I met with her. In less than a half hour I was psychologically reduced back to that frightened little girl. In the weeks that followed the visit, which had ended with her telling me she was never going to speak to me again and that God was just waiting for the right time to exact his vengeance on me, I reverted back to my old, self-destructive behavior. I didn’t care what happened to me anymore. I thought that God hadn’t killed me because it was more satisfying to watch me hurt and to torture me this way instead.”
I glance toward Josh, wondering if he wants to give me up now. If he thought I had emotional baggage before, this is sure to rush him out the door.
Instead he says, “Sophie … you never deserved any of it. You’re the best mother and kindest person I know. I’m so sorry that was your upbringing.”
I nod again. He hasn’t heard the rest. “I left the good guy, quit my job, stopped going to school and started traveling around, homeless again. I’d have sex just to be held and pretend I was loved, even for a little while. I began drinking at the local party spots.
Nothing mattered. I ended up in a small, nowhere town where everyone knew everyone else. One night there was a big party at the boat ramp. The cops pulled up with blue lights blazing and busted in, but it was all a big joke; the cops were there to party too. Remember, small town—it’s a crucial detail. That’s the night I met Officer Jim Murphy. He was excellent at psychological manipulation, and I was ripe to be manipulated. After a couple weeks in the sack, I got pregnant.”
The engine is still running, and the windows are all fogged from our breathing. I’ve gotten control over my emotions now. “Could you please pass me my clothes?”
“Of course.” Josh’s voice is hoarse. His eyes are bloodshot. He’s tough, but he’s tender.
I dress myself, knowing I’m coming to the serious obstacle in the story. I don’t know if our relationship will make it over the hurdle.
Chapter Nineteen
Josh
Holy fucking hell!
Sophie is so amazing, so sweet and loving, that never in a million years would I have guessed she was raised like that, abused and tortured.
“It’ll be easier for me to talk, I think, if you’re driving. Your eyes will have to stay on the road and not on me,” she says.
“I can do that.” I’ll do whatever she needs. I maneuver up front, pass her back her boots and coat and open the back so she can walk easily to the passenger seat.
> I wipe off the ice and condensation that’s formed on the window, and soon we’re taking a ride on a long back road.
“A baby was a miracle to me,” she says. I catch her smile and know she’s thinking about Charlie. “I would finally have someone to love who would love me back unconditionally. A baby, to me, was a gift from God. Maybe God didn’t really loathe me after all.”
Her smile fades into a grimace. “I married Jim at the justice of the peace a month later, and my existence became even more of a living hell. It was like I’d gotten everything my mother had promised me. Jim beat me, physically … psychologically, he crippled me.”
She turns toward me. “I tried to leave him—several times. At first he seemed so sorry that I believed him and went back to him. Then, once his apologies stopped working on me, he switched to a new tactic. He started threatening to kill me if I ever left him again.”
Sophie’s pained expression is killing me. “He’d hold his pistol to my head and tell me how he was going to kill me”
She’s reliving it as she tells the story. She makes her hand into a pistol and holds it in her other hand. “He told me he’d keep me alive as a prisoner, but just barely, until the baby was developed enough to survive outside of my womb, then he’d cut her out of me and watch me die.”
My breath catches in my throat. Jesus Christ! What the fuck do you say to that? How the hell do you comfort someone who’s experienced that?
I have to look at her. I have to pull over. I have to do something. My adrenaline is racing … but she doesn’t look away from her hands.
She asked me to drive.
Just drive.
“When he let me out of the house, he reminded me that if I stepped out of line he’d make good on his promise. He even drove by the local women’s shelter to show me I wouldn’t be safe there—of course since he was a cop, he’d brought other women there to protect them. He made me go to work and would call me on the business phone every hour to make sure I was still there. He would take my paychecks—I never saw any of the money, and he never bought anything that the baby or I would need, including food. I was forced to steal cash from my work so I could eat. He used all our money for drinking, cocaine and women.”
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