With all the honesty in the world, I replied, “I swear on everything I have that I won’t ever hurt you. I want you,” I squeezed her waist, stressing the word, “and I want to be as big a part of Liv’s life as you’ll let me be. But, please, baby, believe me when I say – what I plan on us having will be for life, not just for now. So, when you start to worry, and if any doubts hit you, come to me so that I can keep promising you that.” I hope to Christ what I was saying helped her get past any reservations she had, or if anything that asshole had put her through made her panic and doubt things in the future. Then something hit me, I found a way to make her understand. “Evette would check my phone when I got up to go to the bathroom,” I told her, feeling her jerk at the random mention of my ex after what she’d gone through with her tonight. “She would look through it and accuse me of cheating if she saw a woman’s name on there. It got to the point where she was tracking my phone to monitor what I was doing, and she’d turn up when I was working on a female client.” Her eyes went wide as she heard that, more than likely thinking what the rest of us did – level ten stalker. “I had no privacy, and I didn’t even know about it until she started repeating messages to me verbatim, and one of her friends told me what she was doing after she’d bragged about it and told them personal shit over drinks one night. I’m a private guy, I like my business to be just mine, but she was telling everyone about my so called infidelities, and would then call the women names when she saw them. One of them even had the word ‘whore’ keyed into her vehicle.”
“Holy shit,” she gasped.
“Yeah. In the end I had to keep my phone in my pocket or turn it off and leave it in the car if I saw her, just so that she couldn’t go into it.”
“That didn’t stop her from doing it, did it?” she guessed. It was phrased as a question, but we both knew the answer, so I shook my head.
“What I’m saying is – how many times have I left my phone with you? How many times have I passed it to you to use?”
She looked to the side as she thought about my questions and then back at me. “I don’t remember you ever taking it with you. You always just pass it to me to hold.”
“Right. I do that because, from the day I knew you were free of fuck face, I never wanted you to have a reason to doubt me or not trust me, and I knew I could trust you with it to not do what she did. Do you see what I’m saying?” I gave her waist another squeeze. I could have probably taken my time and found better wording for it, but I wanted her to understand this, so eloquent wording would have to wait.
This time when she replied, I could hardly hear her, but I knew what she said all the same. “Yes.”
I needed more, though. “What am I saying?”
Lifting her hands up to hold my face in place, she replied, “That you trust me not to break your trust, and by you doing that, you want mine back.”
Nodding, I pulled her close to me and tucked her head under my chin. “Right, baby, that’s exactly it. It’s just a phone, but what’s on there is someone’s private business. If we choose to allow someone access to that it’s our decision to make, and only ours. Someone going in there without you inviting them to do it is like a violation, and if you spin around what I’m saying, I’m promising not to violate your trust. It’s a strange way to put it, and the weirdest example ever, but if you think about everything on your phone right now, all the private stuff that you take for granted that no one will ever see, does it make sense?”
She didn’t even hesitate when she answered my question. “It does.”
“Good. So, we’re really doing this?” I wanted to make sure she was totally onboard, it was one thing saying it, another thing actually doing it, and I didn’t want to push her into a situation she wasn’t ready for.
The huge grin she gave me was answer enough, but when she said, “Hell yes!” I swear I felt like taking out an ad on a billboard to announce it to the world.Jose
The next morning…“So, have you guys…” Tabby bumped my shoulder as I stood in the kitchen chopping vegetables for Liv’s meals. I was getting things ready to make a big batch of different ones and freeze them so that we had a supply ready for her.