The Imperfections

My voice trembles a little as I ask, “Brant? Are you okay?”

He nods, but barely. Every cord in his neck is so tense, I feel like he’s at risk of snapping in half.

“Why won’t you say anything?” I ask, my alarm growing.

“I’m trying,” he says, but I’ve never heard him so strained before, not even during sex. I search his face and his posture, but somehow I don’t connect the last words I said to him before he froze with his reaction.

Not until he finally finds a way to ask. He looks over at me, and he asks the question I somehow forgot I would have to answer.

“Why was he on the bed with you?”

My blood runs cold and this time it’s me who freezes. Now all my words are stuck in my throat, and I understand why he struggled to speak for so long. I’m so completely frozen, I forget to breathe for a minute.

Brant doesn’t push, but I know he’s waiting for an answer—an answer I don’t want to give and don’t want to think about, but knowing I have to give him answers, I resolve to just get it out as quickly as I possibly can.

“I wanted to wait up for you, but I was so tired. I went to bed. Then I woke up when I thought you were climbing into bed with me, only it wasn’t you.”

Brant nods stiffly, but I only see it out of my periphery. I can’t look at him right now, too afraid of what I’ll see on his face if I do. I look at Theo instead.

My words seem to run dry for a moment, and we both just stand there until I can speak again. There are plenty of useless details I could share. Some part of me is tempted to just to delay the inevitable, but I know what he wants to know, and even though I don’t know how he’ll take it, I have to tell him.

“He wanted to fuck me. I tried to stop him, but he used the baby against me. I was too vulnerable, and he wasn’t afraid to hurt me, and it was too hard—”

Brant brings a hand up to cover his mouth and a shard of fear cuts through me.

I look up at him, even though he’s not looking at me. “I’m so sorry, Brant. I really, truly tried, but he was too strong—”

Not letting me finish, Brant turns and grabs me, pulling me into his arms. “For Christ’s sake, don’t apologize to me, Alyssa. You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

Despite his words or maybe because of them, shame swells up around me. “I didn’t want him to touch me, I swear I didn’t. It didn’t last very long, and he didn’t get to finish or anything. I couldn’t bear it and I grabbed your gun out of the nightstand, but that’s why he was on the bed. I didn’t want him to be, I swear to God.”

“Alyssa.” Brant’s voice is more growl than speech, and he grabs my head, pushing my face into his chest again. “Please stop apologizing. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I know, but you hate him so much, and I’m your wife—no one should ever touch me. I thought I could stop him in time, I thought you’d come through the door. I hoped for that so hard, but I just couldn’t. He was too strong, and before he—I couldn’t fight him at full strength, I was only able to catch him off guard because he was… he was inside me, and now you’re never going to want to touch me again.”

Pressing his hand more firmly against the back of my head as I lose my shit and cling to him, he murmurs reassuring nonsense and strokes my back.

I hold on to him for a long time, even after I’m calm again. It feels so nice when he holds me and rubs my back like this, and even though I know it’s not true, it feels like everything is okay.

Finally, I pull back.

I brace myself and look into Brant’s face, prepared for some small measure of the coldness he lobbed at me after he caught me in the barn with Theo, but I don’t see anything like that. Instead, there’s something closer to guilt in his eyes.

Reaching forward and cupping my cheek in his hand, Brant says, “I’m so sorry.”

Frowning, I press on his hand with mine and lean into his touch. “For what?”

“For not being able to stop this from happening to you.”

Fresh tears well up in my tired eyes. I don’t want him to feel guilty. I don’t even want him to know, and I desperately wish he didn’t. “I just don’t want it to hurt us,” I say simply. “When I was in the bathroom, I got so sick thinking about it. All I could think was ‘Brant’s not going to want me anymore,’ and I couldn’t bear that.”