Exception (31 page)

“She kicked me several times while yelling obscenities at me. I curled in a ball, but her feet still found new targets. I had no more strength left. I couldn’t scream or cry, and every inch of my body ached so bad that I couldn’t even hold my position. The last thing I remember is begging her to stop, and her laughing again before picking up a kettle from the stove and hitting me in the head with it.”

Taylor’s eyes burned with the tears he was holding back. Hate wasn’t even close to being a proper description for his feelings towards the woman. Even if the victim hadn’t been his best friend, he would have hated her.
What mother does that to her child?
Without giving it a second thought, Taylor leaned forward and pulled Emily into his lap.

Protected in a cocoon formed by his strong and loving arms, Emily allowed herself to cry in a way she hadn’t for over a decade. Her sobs were the ones of a person who learned to hide her pain. Her body trembled, and tears drenched Taylor’s t-shirt, but no sound came from her.

As he held her, he thought of a million things he could say, from a heartfelt
I’m sorry this happened to you
to an equally heartfelt
I promise to find a hired gun and kill the bitch
, but he decided to remain quiet and give her the space to grieve.

With a broken heart, Taylor held her as strongly as he could without hurting her. He kissed her head countless times as his own tears began to fall. For half an hour they stayed like that, crying for her tragic past and finding comfort in each other’s arms, until her silent sobbing subsided.

“You want to watch some TV?” Taylor asked in a low, sad voice.

With her head still pressed against his chest Emily answered, “You don’t want to hear the rest?”

“I want to hear everything you want to tell me—but if you want to stop and relax it’s okay.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to move. If I can stay here, I would like to finish.”

Despite his sadness, Taylor smiled at her shy admission of wanting to stay in his arms. “I’m not in any hurry for you to move, so stay and talk for as long as you want.” Emily looked up at him through her thick wet lashes. The tiniest smile curling her full, lush lips, spread warmth across his sad heart. “Can I just ask you something before you go on?”

“You can ask me anything Tay, no secrets.”

“What about your dad?”

Emily took a deep breath and knit her brows together. She was expecting him to ask something related to the story she just told him, not about her father. “Frank was never violent.”

“That’s good, and what did he do when he arrived home and saw what she’d done? Did he leave her and take you girls away?”

There was a hint of hope in Taylor’s eyes that at least her father had been man enough to do his job and protect his little girls, but it was short-lived when Emily let out a sarcastic low laugh. The sound chilled his bones; obviously nothing good would follow.

“Even though Frank wasn’t violent, he was an absent asshole who was more concerned with making money and collecting twenty-year-old mistresses than protecting his kids.” Her voice dripped with disgust. “He found us at the hospital, not at home, and it took him two hours to get there. While Jane was assaulting me, Charlie kicked and pushed against the door until it broke. She was eleven and had a broken arm, so it took her a while.

“She told me that Jane was crying under the kitchen table and I was on a blood-soaked kitchen mat, unconscious, badly bruised and with a broken nose.” Lifting her small hand she touched the small scar on the bridge of her nose before continuing. “She was calling emergency when Jane took the phone from her to speak to the dispatch. Her story was that she tripped down the stairs and let her little girls fall.”

“And did they buy it?” Taylor asked, horrified.

The sad smile was back on Emily’s face. “She made some nasty threats and Charlie agreed to confirm her story. When Frank decided to also believe them, so did the doctors and the cops. To this day, Charlie believes Frank bribed some of them to let it go.”

At that gruesome confession Taylor tightened his hold, wanting to protect her from the threat that wasn’t there anymore. “It continued for how long?”

“Frank divorced her when I was fifteen, so seven years. But, other than the one I just told you, it only got really bad three other times,” she admitted with a shrug of her shoulders, and a small laugh that left Taylor puzzled as to how she could make a joke about such a sad thing.

Noticing his expression, Emily explained. “After that incident, Charlie stole a baseball bat from her school. We named it Mjölnir, after Thor’s hammer. Whenever Jane was around she kept Mjölnir close, and if she ever got close enough to one of us, Charlie started swinging it.”

Taylor laughed, imagining the teenage girl flashing her bat at their crazy mother. “Charlie seems pretty amazing.”

“She is, and I can’t wait for you to meet her, you’ll love her.” Her eyes sparkled with pride. “The three times, they only happened because I was alone. Other than that, she would only get a slap or two in before Charlie came running, all too willing to play the god of thunder.”

“And those three times—”

She didn’t need to hear the end of the question to know what he was asking. “Two cracked ribs, a broken finger, a broken collarbone, a mild concussion, a tooth that was broken beyond repair and several bruises. But they didn’t hurt half as much as the curses and the hateful words she said—those were the worst part you know,” she said, looking at him with a ghost of a smile. “Do you want the stories?”

Her voice was steel as years of practice had taught her to be, but Taylor could see in her eyes that, beneath the control she was showing, her pain was almost unbearable. Despite this, he was absolutely certain that if he asked, she would share all those terrible memories with him.

“No, I don’t think I could hear them without resorting to murder,” he answered bluntly, making her laugh.

“That’s good.” She visibly relaxed as her lips curled into a small smile. “So, moving on, because of all of that I spent most of my life suffering from anxiety. Every time I found myself threatened I would start shaking, become incoherent, I would sweat and itch all over and, in extreme cases, I would pee myself and pass out, which only happened twice by the way,” she said, absolutely mortified. She received a soft kiss on the top of her head in reassurance. “After Nana died, when I was ten, Charlie, who was also just a kid, was my only real caretaker. Neither one of us had a clue about what was happening to me, so we worked together to find ways for me to calm down whenever I started to panic.

“It was only after we left Seattle and I began therapy in California that I understood those attacks were related to the trauma Jane’s abusive behavior created. After a few years of treatment, I got a lot better. All the symptoms ceased, I could allow physical contact and I didn’t have nightmares anymore. Life was good.”

A chill ran down Taylor’s spine. “And now we enter part two?”

With the small smile Taylor had seen too many times that night, Emily answered, “Yes, now we enter part two.”

He took a deep breath and nodded, giving her the green light to continue.

“On the night after my last undergrad final, a friend invited me to accompany her to a party in Hollywood, to celebrate. There, I met Kevin.” Her lips twisted with disgust at the name. “He was the son of a movie mogul and an aspiring director. He was also handsome and adorable. We spent the entire night talking and dancing and having fun with my friends—it was a perfect night. When he walked me to my car, he asked for my number, and I gave it to him. He called the next day, and two days later we had our first date.”

Taylor fidgeted in annoyance, hearing about her ex. Not wanting her to see the look on his face, he rearranged their sitting position, settling her in the cushion between his legs with her head and back against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her once again.

As Emily continued her story, she played with the hair on his arms. “Though he never officially asked me, we were instantly a couple, and I was happy in a way I had never been before. He was my first everything and, at the time, I was glad.”

That information piqued Taylor’s curiosity. “What do you mean ‘first everything?’” he interrupted. “You’d never even kissed anyone before him?”

“Not consensually,” her voice was weak and even a little hurt.

With one of his hands he gently turned her head to the side so she would be looking at him, his angry, furrowed brows asked the question his lips didn’t. With a hint of embarrassment, she offered the answer. “A boy in high school kissed me by force once, which resulted in the most embarrassing panic attack of my life and yet another save from Charlotte and her bat.”

That information got him doubly pissed. He wondered what had not been robbed from her. Her parents robbed her of the happy and safe childhood every kid deserves, a little idiot robbed her of the first kiss every young woman dreams of and he could bet that seemingly Prince Charming Kevin wasn’t innocent at all.

“Should I stop? You look pretty mad.”

Taylor rubbed the frustration from his eyes before answering her. “I’m sorry, Ems. I’m obviously not mad at you, I’m just—mad.” He inhaled deeply, allowing his full lungs to calm him. He ran a gentle finger across her cheek and locked his eyes with hers. “Please go on, and let’s get this over with so you don’t ever have to relive it again, okay?”

It was heartwarming how affected he was by her story. It made her feel like he was sharing her pain, and that was an unexpected reaction. She lifted a hand to his stubbled cheek and patted twice. With closed eyes, Taylor leaned his head harder against her palm and covered her small hand with his.

“Okay, but it’s gonna get worse than a teenage boy stealing a kiss and making me piss myself, so if at any point you need a break just tell me, promise?” she asked in a careful voice.

He was amazed at her strength. She was revisiting her horrible past because he’d asked her to, and
she
was comforting
him
. Once again, he tightened his hold on her and kissed the top of her head. “I promise, now go on.”

“Well, you asked what I meant by my first everything.” Emily took a deep breath as she looked for a proper answer and the best way to deliver it. “What with all the problems I had with Jane and the anxiety attacks, I never paid much attention to the boys in school. Some of them liked me and invited me to dances and things, but I always preferred books to people. Kevin was the first man I noticed, my first date, my first real kiss, my first boyfriend, and well—you get the picture.”

She avoided his eyes and, pushing past her embarrassment, she continued, “The beginning of our relationship was a long-distance thing, since he lived in LA and I was getting my masters at Stanford, but it was still perfect. We would fly back and forth constantly and talk whenever we weren’t able to see each other. Ten months in, he asked me to transfer to UCLA and move in with him. I gave it serious thought but, in the end, Simon convinced me not to, since I only had a few more months to go. Kevin wasn’t too happy about it, but I promised that as soon I was done with it I would go back to LA and move in with him.

“The first year of living together was pure heaven. I really did love him, and would do just about anything to make him happy. With his father’s help, his career picked up towards the end of that first year, which meant that for the next two years he kept busy with trips to different locations and late night shoots and red carpets. In every way I tried to be the perfect girlfriend, partner and arm candy for him. To everyone, including me, we were the perfect couple in the perfect relationship.”

Emily took a long pause, shifting in her seat and moving her tense, stiff shoulders in a feeble attempt to relax. However, the flashes of memories pushing through her mind were too overpowering, muting all of her attempts.

After what seemed like forever, she cleared her throat and continued. “One night, right after Charlie and her husband, Chuck, came back from their honeymoon, I invited them to have dinner at our house. We were at the table, eating and talking, when Kevin’s phone began ringing. It must have rung like twenty times, but he ignored all of them. He said that work would never be more important than his family and, as you can imagine, I swooned like a teenage girl. After all I had been through, that was all I wanted. Charlie and I were cleaning the table to bring the dessert when our landline rang.”

Up until that moment, Emily’s voice had remained calm and sweet, but something about what was to come turned it raspy and sad. Taylor knew that things were about to get ugly. Keeping his tight grip on her, he rubbed his hand up and down her arm, reassuring her that he would never allow any harm to come to her again.

Tucking her hair behind her ear once more before returning her hand to his arm, she continued her story. “It was a woman named Natalie. She said she needed to speak with Kevin urgently, so I took the phone to him, not thinking much of it. His usual calm, friendly face turned into pure anger. He excused himself and took the phone with him to the study where he stayed for half an hour. I got worried and decided to take some ice cream to him. I was about to knock on the door when I heard him speak in a tone I never imagined he’d ever use with anyone.