Play Me Right (Play Me 5)

“For years they had the boys will be boys mentality—”

“He’s not a fucking boy an

ymore. He’s a man in his late twenties and he should fucking know better than to lay a hand on a woman.”

“Yeah, well, he much preferred to use his feet so that argument doesn’t really—”

“Son of a bitch!” The words explode from Sebastian, interrupting my one attempt at being flippant.

“It was a long time ago.”

“Do you think that fucking matters to me? It could be ten years ago or ten hours ago. I don’t actually give a fuck.”

“I know that. And I appreciate it. I really do.”

“How long did you stay with him?” he demands.

“Too long.” I shrug when he looks at me incredulously. “In my house, family duty is a pretty big deal. So I put up with it until I couldn’t hide the bruises anymore.”

Sebastian growls deep in his throat, looks like he wants to hit something. It doesn’t scare me though, doesn’t have me drawing back in fear the way I would have with Carlo. Partly that’s because I know Sebastian would never hurt me like that, but it’s also partly because of me. Because I’m not the same woman I was when I left home fourteen months ago. Not the same doormat who caves because it’s easier than fighting, even if it means getting hurt.

With the thought comes the worst of the memories and tears bloom in my eyes. I try to blink them back, try to pretend it doesn’t still hurt, but the fact is it does. And it probably always will. Not Carlo, not what he did to me, but what came after.

“God, baby, please don’t cry,” Sebastian says, pressing his lips to my cheek and kissing my tears away, one at a time. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

I don’t know how to tell him that that isn’t why I’m crying. That I’m over Carlo and what he did to me—have been over it for months. It’s his outrage that gets me, his fury that someone would do something like that to me. His desire to do something to make it stop when my own family didn’t give a damn.

This is where the story gets hard to tell. Not that talking about the fact that my fiancé beat me is ever easy, but this part…it’s this betrayal that made everything so much worse.

“Carlo isn’t why I left,” I tell him softly. My hands are tangled in his shirt now and though I want to pretend I don’t need the support, it isn’t true. I’ve never told anyone what I’m about to tell Sebastian and if I couldn’t touch him, couldn’t have him hold me while I tell the story, I don’t think I’d ever be able to do it.

But he is here and he has a right to know. Especially after what happened between us in his suite the other day, how I reacted to the way he pushed and pushed and pushed. “My parents wanted me to marry him anyway.”

For long seconds he doesn’t react and I’m afraid he’s so lost in his own thoughts that he didn’t hear me. That I’ll have to say it again.

But then he pulls back and stares at me with eyes so dark they are nearly black. “They wanted you to marry a man who beat you?”

I nod, and am so ashamed I want to look away. But he’s got my face in his hands and though he’s shaking with rage, his touch is more gentle than it’s ever been. “That’s why I stayed for so long. Because I didn’t want to disappoint them. Because I didn’t know how to be anything but the woman they wanted me to be.

“They had such control over me, held the reins so tightly that for a long time, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything but what they expected of me. I could just take it and take it and take it.”

I see it, the moment it registers on him. The moment he figures out why I broke in his suite four days ago. A look of such self-loathing comes over his face that this time I’m the one who moves. This time, I’m the one who puts my arms around him and pulls him close.

“You didn’t know,” I whisper as I press kisses to his mouth. “You didn’t know what had happened to me.”

“That’s not a good enough excuse. Not when I hurt you. Not when I made you feel helpless.” He bows his head, rests his forehead against mine. And for the first time I see the tears in his eyes. Tears of sorrow and remorse and fury. It’s a deadly combination, one that will corrode his insides until there’s nothing left but acid so caustic it hurts to swallow. To breathe.

I know, because I lived through that same cocktail of emotions. For days, weeks, months.

“You didn’t know,” I tell him, “because I didn’t tell you. I couldn’t admit that when I first went to my mom and asked for help, she showed me which concealers cover bruises best. And when I went to my father a couple months later, he told me that I should act better if I didn’t want my fiancé to hurt me. That I should stop making mistakes.”

I shake my head, still astonished at their cruelty, their blindness, after all these months. “But I wasn’t making mistakes. I was doing everything exactly how Carlo wanted it and still he came up with a reason to hurt me.”

“Because it made him feel good.”

“Yes.”

Sebastian’s fists clench before he takes a few deep breaths, makes himself relax. “So what made you decide to leave? I’m grateful you did, but what—”