Page 28 of The Write Track
She nodded. “One winter, in February. We both had to move our mattresses out to the living room to sleep next to the fireplace for a month. It was cheaper to have furnace work done between seasons. They run specials then, so my Mom had to wait until March, before the AC rush, to get the furnace fixed.”
“So you slept on the living room floor for a month?”
She shrugged. “My mom turned it into a camping extravaganza. We got s’mores in bed every night. I never knew it was a terrible thing. She made it fun.”
If the memory was fun, why did she look so sad? “What’s up, Bella?” I asked, getting to the heart of matters. Something had obviously happened to disturb her. A horrific thought bubbled up. “Did something happen with Preston?”
“It’s weird that you bring him up.” She angled her head toward me, her blue eyes turbulent. “He found me yesterday at a coffee shop.”
There were so many ways I could take that simple statement that I didn’t know where to start. The first thing I did was look her over. She didn’t have a mark on her. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t hurt her.
“Did he put his hands on you?” I demanded.
“No.” She shook her head. “He’s not going to do that. I already told you.”
“You’re freaking out. If he didn’t put his hands on you, why are you freaking out?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m freaking out,” she hedged.
I gave her a dubious look. “No? How did you figure out where I live? The hoops you would have had to jump through to do that are oversized. You don’t even have my number.”
“I don’t,” she agreed. “I would say I need it, but you’re going to wipe your hands of me by the time I’m done here. You won’t want to trust me with your number.”
She had my full attention now. “Just tell me what happened, and we’ll handle it.” I hated the idea of her being afraid. All she wanted was a fresh start. This douche nozzle wasn’t going to make it easy. I loathed that for her.
“I wasn’t expecting him,” she explained. “I thought for sure he was back in Boston.”
“And, what, flying back here every few weeks for the events?”
She shrugged. “He has the money. This isn’t even his type of town.”
She was too naïve for her own good. “Honey, if he thinks he can get to you, he’ll throw huge gobs of money at getting a place here.”
Her expression said she didn’t want to consider it. “He sat down with me even though I was writing. I didn’t ask him to,” she said. “He kept talking about going to therapy.”
“You didn’t fall for that, did you?”
“Probably not in the way you mean. I do remember thinking ‘that will be good for whatever woman he sucks in next’ but it’s not as if it was going to sway my decision. I have no feelings for him. I can’t even hate him. He just won’t…”
“Leave you alone.”
“Right.” Storm clouds gathered in her eyes, and she took a moment to arrange her thoughts. “He kept saying it was time for me to go home, that he’d acknowledged his part in our breakup,so it was time for me to do the same. I kept telling him it didn’t matter, that he should just go home, but then he would come back around at me from a different direction.”
“He gaslit you for years,” I surmised. “He thinks he can keep doing it and eventually wear you down.”
“I told him that wasn’t going to happen,” she said hurriedly. “I was determined to make sure that it didn’t happen, in fact. He just… he… he…” She was floundering in a churning ocean with no lifeboat in sight.
“You do not have to make excuses for that man,” I assured her. “None of this is your fault, Bella, and you’re desperate to be seen as anything other than a burden. Just… take a breath. It’s going to be okay. Finish it out.”
“That’s just it.” Her eyes were glassy when she swung her gaze to me. “I am about to be a huge burden to you. I need you to know that you can tell me no. I won’t hold it against you.”
I opened my mouth, but she shook her head.
“You’ve already done so much for me.” Her voice was barely louder than a whisper, and not because she was scared, I realized. She didn’t think I would explode any more than she expected Preston to do the same. She just didn’t want to create ripples in anybody else’s life.
That was her greatest fear. She didn’t want to be a burden.
“Bella, I need you to realize that I don’t find any of this to be a burden,” I started in my most matter-of-fact voice. “That guy, he’s a jerk. He deserves to be taken down a peg or two.”
