Behind Her Smile (32 page)

“We need a couple of eggs. Can you grab two from the refrigerator?”

For a few minutes, we work this way—Sara gives directions and I follow them.

“You know the recipe by heart,” I comment inanely.

“Been making chocolate chip cookies a long time.” She looks a million miles away, lost in the memory of cookies past.

“Never made them,” I confess. “Not once. At first, I was just too poor to make them. In college, I lived mostly on peanut butter and jelly and Ramen. Then when I got married, Miranda did all the cooking.”

Sara looks at me from beneath her lashes. “And you weren’t allowed to use the kitchen?”

“No,” I whisper, feeling two inches tall. What kind of woman couldn’t use her own kitchen?

“My boyfriend made me give up my dog, my job, and my car. Not in that order,” she admits.

“You must think I’m crazy,” I finally blurt over the sound of the hand blender. Sara turns off the appliance and looks at me carefully.

“No, not a bit. I saw you on the news,” she says softly.

Cringing, I glance away in shame.

“There’s nothing to be embarrassed by. Everyone found their way to Willow’s House because of unsavory circumstances.” She laughs a little then, but the sound has no traces of good humor. “I’m here because my boxer boyfriend confused me with his punching bag every time he drank. And that was most of the time since he’s an alcoholic.”

“You left him.”
Before it got too bad. Before he did unspeakable things. You got yourself out.
I don’t say the rest. I can’t say the rest because it reminds me just how pathetic I am, just how terrible of a mother I was to my baby. “You are an incredible woman.” I don’t recognize my own voice; a tight throat garbles it. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have interrupted your baking.”

I spin on my heels and walk blindly through the house until I get to the front door. Forcing the door open, I collapse forward with my hands resting on my knees. I heave in deep breaths.

“Karolina.” Adriana places a hand on the center of my back.

“I’m okay,” I wheeze once I have my breathing under control and I can stand upright. From Adriana’s worried expression, I can tell she believes the lie as much as I do. “I’m sorry. This wasn’t a good idea.”

“You weren’t ready. It was my fault,” my friend rushes to say.

“I’ll call you later,” I say helplessly. “I need to be alone for a little while.”

Unable to wipe the mournful expression off her face, Adriana crosses her arms over her chest and silently says good-bye.

Disgust plagues me as I drive back to the condo on autopilot. Why didn’t I leave David when I could? There were dozens, no hundreds, of times I could have escaped the torment. It would have taken one internet search to find Willow’s House. I had a car. I had—
have—
the meager savings I’d accumulated before I married David. Somehow, I would have made it work on my own. I had no confidence in my own abilities to take care of myself. I didn’t even look for an alternative. At the times I could have been aggressive, I was passive. Everything happened
to
me. When did I become a weak, submissive person? Up until I met David, I fought for what I wanted. I was putting myself through fashion school. Then he swept into my life in a cloud of Armani cologne and the illusion of love, and I forgot myself. David controlled everything down to my own body.

Thinking of my weakness makes my stomach bob and weave. I feel physically ill.

I stumble out of the car in the underground parking lot. The private, residents-only elevator is blessedly empty when the car opens. Inside, I collapse against the wall. Grief consumes me. The loss of my son. The loss of myself.

The elevator pings on the twentieth floor. Blindly, I make my way down the hallway and to the apartment. Ahead of my blurry gaze, a dark thundercloud takes up residence outside one of the units. Keeping my head low, I walk hurriedly toward my temporary residence when the gray blob grabs me by the upper arm.

“Karolina.”

Embarrassment and relief whirl inside me at the sound of his voice. My knees give way and I fold into his waiting embrace. As it’s not the first time I’ve fallen into Alec’s waiting arms, I do not hesitate to take comfort in him. His familiar warmth and spicy scent. He steers me into the apartment easily, finding my keys in my purse, handling the lock, all the while maintaining close physical contact.

Alec settles me into one corner of the couch then moves into the kitchen. The faucet pours water into what sounds like the teakettle. Turning over my shoulder, I see he’s already lost his suit jacket and is quickly arranging a mug of tea.

Hugging my knees to my chest, I watch him move around the kitchen fluidly, as though he lives here himself. “How did you know? How do you always know when I need you? You’re supposed to be at work. It’s the middle of the day.”

“Adriana called me and said you were shaken up after a visit to Willow’s House.”

The teakettle whines a high-pitched warning that the water is boiling while I ruminate.

“And you dropped everything to come see if I was all right?”

His brow furrows. “By now, I would have thought you might understand how deeply I care for you, Karolina. If you are hurting, I will do anything to cheer you. Fuck my business. There’s nowhere I would rather be than with you.”

Squeezing my knees tighter to my chest, I shake my head back and forth mournfully. “You have the wrong idea about me. I’m not who you think I am. It’s better you know the truth. I don’t want to hide anything from you.”

Alec does nothing to hide his growing displeasure. His shoulders visibly tighten when he places the steaming mug on the coffee table. “Believe me, Karolina, I’ve looked at you from every angle. I’ve had five fucking years to figure out my feelings.”

Shrinking into myself protectively, I keep my gaze on my hands.

“Dammit, you know I won’t hurt you,” he growls. “Look at me.”

When I don’t lift my chin, a light touch nudges my gaze up to meet his limitless, black eyes. The simmering anger wars with his gentle touch. His hand falls to his side once he has my full attention. “Internalize this. File it away. Remember it always. I will never hurt you. I will never raise my hands to you in anger.
Never.
Do you understand me?”

“You see a woman who doesn’t exist.”

Alec leans closer, dominating my entire field of vision. “We’ll get to that in a minute. Believe this, Karolina, not all men are abusive assholes. I will
never
hurt you.”

The hard conviction lacing each word thaws a layer of hard ice imprisoning my heart. “I want to believe you, but I don’t know if I can.”

There. I said it. An involuntary wince builds, but I manage to hold the automatic reaction back while I wait for him to respond.

All the hardness in Alec’s expression softens. He angles backward, far enough to give me a bit of breathing room, but not far enough for me to lose the warmth emanating from his body.

“Progress, sweet Karo. We’ll get there.”

My stomach twists. “I’m not. Sweet, that is.”

“I’ve known you for five years. We’ve spent enough time together for me to know you and you to know me very well. You know things about me no one else does because I trust you. Implicitly. I’m not a man to give his trust to undeserving subjects. Now you’re saying I have you all wrong. Explain it to me. Tell me what I’m not seeing.”

“The first time I picked up a thread and needle, I was seven years old at a summer camp. Even though I was too young for the activity, according to the counselors, I begged and begged my mom until she demanded they allow me to participate. One pair of crappy pajama pants later and I was hooked. I thought all I ever wanted out of life was a career in fashion. I worked myself to exhaustion during high school and college to keep that dream alive. And then David happened. I let it all go to be with him. Every dream disappeared into thin air because he gave me something I didn’t even know I wanted—a sense of belonging.”

“I can understand that,” Alec murmurs, causing another chink in the armor shielding my heart. “For someone who hasn’t felt part of something greater than themselves, that bond is practically irresistible. Look at me. I’ve let business dictate my priorities, and I’m a thirty-four-year-old man with no personal growth to show for it. If I hadn’t been stubborn and opened myself up to someone . . . who knows? I admire your courage, Karolina. Despite being hurt by your family, you were willing to take a chance.”

“Courage has nothing to do with it.” The laugh that bursts from my hollow chest is bitter. “I was so desperate for someone to love me that I believed every one of David’s lies. Whatever he told me, I took at face value.”

“Christ, if you questioned him that hard, you would be incredibly cynical.”

“A little cynicism could have saved me from all the pain.”

“You don’t know anything for certain,” Alec insists.

I can’t look at him when I say this next part. I’m too ashamed. “If I had any guts, I would have left him before we got married. The first time he ever hurt me was the night before the small wedding. He pushed me onto the bed with so much force that it left marks up and down my sides. It wasn’t okay when he apologized, and it wasn’t okay the night of our wedding when he took me–” I shudder unable to say anything further.

Suddenly, I’m against Alec’s chest. He squeezes me to him with force but not enough to cause pain. “If he weren’t in jail, I would rip that smug smirk right off his face.” I tremble against him at the mention of violence.

Wiggling until he releases me, I curl back into the corner of the couch.

“I would
never
hurt you, Karolina. But if someone caused or causes you pain, I can’t promise I won’t hurt them.”

“There’s been enough physical force. Promise me you’ll stay away from David. Promise me you won’t hurt him. It’s done.”

Alec pauses, his jaw ticking with unmasked tension. “If you need that from me, then, yes, I absolutely promise. And I don’t break my word, Karolina. That’s another thing you’ll learn about me.”

Melancholy arrives and desolation sets in. Alec Christos takes my breath away. Compassion swims in his onyx eyes. I don’t want to change the ways he looks at me. But he has to know how weak I truly am, how I am no woman he could ever love.

“David was the one who broke my wrist and my ribs on another occasion. When he wasn’t physically abusing me, he used words to cut me down. Nothing I did was right—the clothing I wore, the way I interacted with his friends and potential clients, the food I ate. No self-respecting person would allow that kind of treatment, but I let him take me down piece by piece. The worst part was I believed all of it. I thought no one else could possibly want me and I stayed. Because I was weak. Those women at Willow’s House left their abusers. They saved their children and themselves before it was too late.”

“How can you speak for the women at Willow’s House? You have no idea what brought them there and you shouldn’t assume anything.” Okay. Alec has a point there. I nod slowly, accepting his argument. “For dealing with such a complex situation, you have an uncanny way of turning this into a black and white scenario. You said yourself that the sense of belonging was appealing to you on your most primal level. No wonder you wanted to stay with him.” Alec makes it all sound simple. He is horribly wrong.

Suddenly, it’s the most important thing in the world to me that he hear the rest of my ugly past. “I knew David had the capacity to hurt me physically when I got pregnant. I knew the threat was real and still I stayed. My son was real to me. I felt him growing inside me, and I loved him with every breath I took, but it wasn’t enough for me to protect him. I didn’t leave David. I stayed and my son paid the ultimate price. It’s an unforgivable sin.” Tears well up but don’t fall. I hug my arms around my chest, but the gesture spurns no comfort.

Alec closes his palms around my shoulders and jerks me toward him again. I’m not afraid of the intensity of his glare. When he speaks, he delivers his words intently and huskily. “There is a boundary that delineates between where you end and another person begins. On one side is what you are responsible for—your own actions. On the other side of the boundary is what you cannot control. You, Karolina, had no control over that filth.”

“I should have left him.” The words come out in a near harsh shout. “The moment I found out I was pregnant I threw myself into his arms because I thought a baby would put an end to the abuse. How stupid I was. A fool to think he wouldn’t strike again. And when he did . . .” Shaking my head, I can’t say any more.

“If you left him, he would have found you. And it could have been much worse.” He presses a finger to my lips to keep me from interrupting. “I am not trying to diminish the incredible loss of your son, Karolina. I’m saying that David Morgan has no qualms about killing. He has a slew of unsavory characters on hand who would have done anything for a piece of his wealth. I ache for you. My heart splinters for you, sweet Karo. You must know it wasn’t your fault.”

The pieces fall together. Loosely. From Alec’s angle, things don’t look quite as ugly. “I could have done more.” The argument is half-hearted.

Alec frowns, seemingly lost in a memory. “David wanted you. He would have stopped short of nothing to have you.”

The back of my neck starts to tingle. “What do you mean?”

Alec rubs the back of his neck. “David is relentless. I don’t think I need to tell you that. He made it clear to me that you were going to be his under no uncertain terms when we saw you that day at the hotel pool.”

“The bet.” I didn’t remember it until this moment.

“The bet.” Alec grimaces. “The biggest mistake I’ve ever made. It’s not an excuse, but I was an arrogant prick then. I won the damn thing and I gave you up. David was enraged—said he wanted you as his girlfriend. I thought he was angry that he lost to me, but he kept ragging on about how you were it for him. I had no clue what he was talking about, but I let it go because I didn’t want anything serious and I didn’t want to mess around with him. See?” he says ruefully. “We both made massive errors in judgment. If I had forced him to back off, we might have avoided this whole mess.”