I’ve been around enough people who’ve been in a state of shock to know that’s exactly what’s going on with Gwen right now. Something scared her enough for her to hole up in her apartment and not let Emma out of her sight.

“Hey, look at me,” I tell her softly.

When she doesn’t respond, I reach up and cup her chin in my hand, gently turning her face towards me. When her watery eyes meet mine, I lose my breath and I’m thankful that I’m not standing right now or my knees might have given out. She’s no longer the fighter I’ve been dealing with the past few days; right now she’s scared to death and about two seconds away from breaking.

Sliding my arms around her waist, I pull her to me. She comes to me without a fight and I flop down on my ass, hauling her into my lap and holding her close. She sits sideways on my thighs, her hands wrapped around my bicep and her face buried in my chest. Leaning back against the wall, I run the palm of my hand down the back of her head and hold her close, listening to the sounds of her quiet sobs, knowing now what it feels like to have a knife jammed right through my heart.

She cries until she doesn’t have any tears left and I’m thankful that Emma likes movies and hasn’t walked out into the hallway. I don’t know how I’d explain to her why her mother has been crying in my lap, especially after the girl just told me last night that she doesn’t want her mom to cry anymore.

“Tell me what’s going on, Gwen.”

She pulls her face away from my chest and looks at me, our noses practically touching, her warm breath fanning over my lips.

Jesus Christ, I’m an asshole. The woman just cried a river in my arms and I’m thinking about kissing her again.

Without a word, she pushes herself off of my lap, reaching her hand down to help me up. Still clutching my hand as I stand, she turns and heads across the hall, pulling me with her into a bedroom.

When we get to the dresser, she lets go of my hand to pull open the top drawer, moving aside t-shirts and socks until she gets to the bottom. She pulls out a thick, manila folder, bringing it to her chest and hugging it for a few seconds before turning to face me. I watch as she swallows thickly before handing the file over to me. I take it out of her hands and she walks away from me, over to the bed to sit on the edge. I stare at her for a few seconds as she leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. She doesn’t say anything, so I turn away from her and open the folder.

The full color photo on top steals the breath from my lungs and my heart beats out of my chest. It’s a picture of Gwen – the old Gwen. Right here in living color is the woman she used to be – long blonde hair, her gray eyes filled with sadness and pain. The blonde hair isn’t what shocks me though – it’s the black eye, busted lip and other assorted bruises that mar the beautiful pale skin of her face.

I glance over at her for an explanation, but she still has her head in her hands, refusing to look at me. I don’t want to look at this file, but I have to. She’s giving me all of the answers, right here in this room and I have to know.

Turning my face back to the file, I slowly flip through each page. There are at least twenty pictures of Gwen in various states of damage from broken ribs and shattered bones to cuts and slices on several areas of her skin that required stitches. In between the photos are doctor’s notes, detailing each “accident” that ranged from falling down stairs to being mugged. Each page I turn to leaves me feeling sick and furious. My hands are shaking by the time I get to the last page. After what Emma said to me, I just assumed Gwen’s ex was verbally abusive. That alone made me want to kill him, but seeing this file and all of the damage he’d done to her makes me want to tear him limb from limb.

“My name was Gwen Stratford.”

I look up from the file to see Gwen studying me.

Stratford… each one of these doctor’s notes were signed by Dr. William Stratford. Obviously not a coincidence.

“Jesus Christ,” I mutter, tossing the file on top of the dresser and walking over to her.

“No, but he thought he was sometimes,” she tells me with a sad smile.

The scar that I noticed on her shoulder the other day is once again peeking out from the top edge of her shirt. I move closer to her, reaching my hand out to run my fingertips over top of the mark. She doesn’t move away this time, just closes her eyes and sighs.

“He didn’t like the new chairs I bought for the dining room, so he broke one. The piece he hit me with had a nail sticking out of it.”

I move my hand away from her skin and take a step back, clenching my hands down at my sides. I’m so God damn furious right now I’m afraid of what I’ll do, not the least of which is get in my car and drive to New York to put a bullet in this fucker’s head.

Chapter 14

Gwen

Austin has been pacing back and forth in the living room, making quiet phone calls on his cell since I showed him the file. I’ve never shown anyone the contents of that thing, including Brady. I just wanted Austin to understand. I wanted him to see why I’m such a mess and why I pushed him away. That file doesn’t even contain half of the damage done to me over the years, just the worst of it. The night I left, I snuck into William’s office to take some money out of the safe that he kept there for emergency purposes. I never expected to see that file nestled in between money, savings bonds, life insurance policies and our wills. I grabbed the file and shoved it into my bag before I woke Emma up, took her from her bed and fled from the home I’d lived in for ten years. I’ve never looked at the file again after that night. I got to Brady’s and buried it at the bottom of my dresser drawer and pretended like it didn’t exist. I didn’t need to look at it to remember every single photograph and every single doctor’s note. The contents are burned into my brain and I see the scars each time I look in the mirror.

When I had to go to the hospital, William would sneak me in through a back door and take me to an unused room in an older part of the hospital. He would stitch me up himself, bandage my cuts or reset my broken bones and put on a cast. The entire time he was doing these things, he would tell me how much he loved me. While he gently poked a needle into my skin to numb the pain or dabbed wounds with gauze, he would tell me stories about the first time he saw me across the crowded room of the charity dinner or the first time he kissed me. He would speak with such love and devotion while he patched up the damage he had done to me. I don’t even remember him ever taking photos while we were in the hospital. The fact that he did, and that he kept them, makes me sick.

“I just talked to the florist. They have no idea who ordered the flowers. It was a busy day and the order was paid for in cash. They don’t even remember if it was a man or woman who ordered them,” Austin tells me as he shoves his phone in his pocket and sits down next to me on the couch.

Austin asked if the flowers outside the front door were the reason for my not coming in to work this morning and for the state he found me in when he got here. When I told him how William used to always give me orchids after he hurt me, Austin stormed out into the hall, picked up all three vases at once and chucked them into the garbage disposal shoot at the end of the hall, making sure to keep the card with the name of the florist on it.

“Those were the ugliest fucking flowers I’ve ever seen anyway,” he told me when he came back into the apartment.

“It’s him. I know it’s him. He’s still supposed to still be in New York,” I mutter to myself on the couch, thinking about the message on the card that read, “I hope these flowers bring back every memory of our time together.”

Austin puts his arm around my shoulders and I let myself lean into his comfort for just a few minutes.

“Maybe he’s not here. He could just have someone doing his dirty work for him. At this point, it’s just a flower delivery and nothing else has happened,” Austin reassures me.

I close my eyes and bow my head. “It’s not just the flowers. Other things have happened too,” I admit to him.

Feeling his arm tighten around me, I look up to see his nostrils flaring and a cold, hard look in his eyes.

“What else?” he asks through clenched teeth in a low voice.

I take a deep breath and tell him about the coffee mugs, the park and the drawing. When I’m finished, he pushes up from the couch quickly and starts pacing the room, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand.

He suddenly stops and looks at me. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me any of this before now? I’m supposed to be protecting you. How the fuck am I supposed to do that if you’re not honest with me?”

Without replying, I get up and walk past him into the kitchen, not wanting to wake Emma up. It’s about to get loud in here and she doesn’t need to hear any of it.

I hate that he’s angry with me for not telling him what was going on and I hate that it bothers me. This is my life, these were my secrets and now he knows everything. It was hard enough accepting his help at the office, let alone admitting to all of my mistakes. Does he think it’s a piece of cake to admit to someone else what a fool you were and to depend on another person again when everyone else has let you down?

I walk over to the sink, and rest my hands on the edge, staring down at the drain.

“You should have told me,” Austin says from behind me, his voice much more calm than a few minutes ago.