CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Bryce watched her slender back as she led the way back into the living room, and swallowed nervously. This was what he had been dreading from practically the moment he’d first met her. He had tried his best to avoid this “talk” and had destroyed his marriage in the process. It was time to take a leap of faith and believe that if she still loved him despite his past cruelty, she could love him enough to overlook even his inherent cravenness. After everything that he had put her through, she more than deserved the truth. He just hoped that he was strong enough to face the consequences if she wanted nothing to do with him afterward.
She stopped walking and he was so wrapped up in his anxiety that he crashed right into her. They both lost their balance and his hands encircled her upper arms to steady her. For a few breathless moments he had her lithe body plastered right up against his, her back to his front, and his body responded with embarrassing predictability. He released her almost immediately and put a decent distance between them, hoping that she hadn’t felt him hardening against the curve of her firm little behind.
Focus, Bryce! he snapped at himself, drawing in a shuddering breath. He moved past her and headed directly to the sofa. He dropped down and folded an ankle over his knee in an uncomfortable attempt to hide his erection from her. The damned thing had no sense of occasion and even the gravitas of the situation wasn’t doing much to tamp things down.
Bronwyn sat down in a chair across from him and stared at him unsmilingly for a few long seconds. That look was more than enough to bring his body back under control. He wasn’t sure how they were supposed to start this conversation and waited to take his cues from her. When she continued to just stare at him, he started to feel uncomfortable and shifted restlessly in his seat. When had she perfected that damned soul-piercing icy stare? It hadn’t been a part of her “irate spouse” repertoire in the past.
“Well,” he said uncomfortably. He was used to silence but he found himself wanting to fill in this particular conversational void with inane words, hoping that it would prompt some kind of response from her. “Well . . .”
She said nothing, her usually expressive face completely devoid of emotion. She wasn’t going to make this easy on him . . . and really, why should she? He had once told her that he couldn’t fix the damage he had wrought—but quite honestly he hadn’t even tried. He could see that now. He hadn’t tried because he hadn’t felt like he’d deserved to try. Well he was done with being crippled by fear. He could fix it—he would fix it. He just had to take the damned leap.
“When we first met . . .” He broke the silence, and Bronwyn made a relieved little sound at the back of her throat. She was grateful that he had ended the interminable silence even though she hadn’t really expected him to start the conversation without some kind of prompt from her. “You were the most enchanting thing that I’d ever seen. You so obviously weren’t coping with that job, you looked harassed and you were so horrified when Pierre and I sat down at one of your tables.”
“You weren’t supposed to notice that,” she interjected dryly and then nearly kicked herself for interrupting him. He laughed softly in response to her words.
“I noticed all right,” he said with a reminiscent little smile. “Your beautiful eyes aren’t very good at hiding your emotions, sweetheart. You were so fascinating. Quite possibly the worst waitress I’ve ever had.” She bit her tongue at that one, but his grin widened at the look on her face. “See? You didn’t like that. Your eyes don’t lie. Pierre couldn’t understand my fascination, and I, in turn, couldn’t understand how he wasn’t seeing the most bewitching creature in the world. Like I said before, I just couldn’t stay away from you. I kept going back, and the more time I spent with you, the more time I wanted to spend with you. The main reason I proposed—contrary to some of the cruel things I’ve said about it—was because I couldn’t imagine my life without you by my side. You loved me. You had told me so many times and I so desperately wanted to say it back, but I couldn’t. I was so happy with you but I didn’t think that I knew how to love. I wanted you to teach me. I wanted you to make me a better person.”
“I don’t understand,” she shook her head.
“I know, I’m sorry. I’m not doing a very good job of this.” He cleared his throat. “Do you remember the conversation we had that evening after we returned from the aquarium?” She nodded and watched him swallow painfully before throwing back his shoulders like someone preparing himself for battle. He seemed unable to meet her eyes and kept his gaze fixed on the wall behind her.
“You asked me what my first memory was,” he said dully. “What I told you, about my father, when he broke my arm—what he did wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t the first time he’d hurt me, just the first time I remembered it. And I certainly remember every damned time it happened after that.”
“Oh my God . . .”
He didn’t see her words. He still wouldn’t look at her as he continued to speak in a terrifying dead voice. She had unconsciously brought both hands up to her mouth in shock. A part of her had been expecting to hear something like this, but now that he was saying the words, she couldn’t quite believe them.
“After Richard was born,” he never called his brother Richard, but for some reason the formality suited the gravity of the conversation, and Bronwyn didn’t question it. “I had to do everything in my power to deflect the old man’s temper and blows onto me. He never laid one filthy finger on my little brother. I wouldn’t let him. I tried to ensure that Rick remained unaffected by the whole sordid mess. If the mean-spirited bastard had lived longer, I may not have been able to shelter Rick as much, but I was thirteen when he died. Rick was ten and still young enough to genuinely mourn our father. Our mother was just a withdrawn shell of a woman who died a few months before my eighteenth birthday. She died mere months after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She didn’t even try to fight it. It was like she’d just given up on life. She’d checked out mentally and emotionally after my father’s accident anyway. I was the one who raised Rick, I took care of him and made sure that he was fed and properly clothed.
“But I thought your family was rich,” she murmured dazedly, but because he still seemed unable to meet her eyes, he didn’t see her words and she waved a little to get his attention before signing them.
“Money doesn’t stop an abuser from being abusive. My mother could have obtained the means to take us and leave, but she wasn’t emotionally strong enough to make that decision. He had her completely cowed, and sometimes I hate her memory even more than I do his. She allowed him to hurt me, to hurt her, and if I hadn’t been there to prevent it, she would have allowed him to hurt Rick as well, and I can’t forgive that.” He shuddered at the thought, and his eyes drifted back to the wall. “We were his perfect family. He had beaten us into submission, and yet he always found more reasons to hit my mother and me.
“But like I said, he never got his grubby fists on my brother.” His words were fierce and shaking with outraged pride. “I was a pretty big kid, and the one time I confronted him was just before he died. He went after Rick but I stood up to him, chest to chest, and he backed off.” Bronwyn could picture it, a scared young boy protecting his little brother by bravely facing down a monstrous man, and she had to curl her hands into tight little fists to keep from crying out at the heartbreaking images that were forming in her head.
“He hit me only once more after that and then he died, in a freak yachting accident. God, I hated him and that hate festered in me. The beatings I took, the verbal abuse he heaped on me, it all stayed with me and twisted me inside. My mother was pitiful, she couldn’t love us and she was terrified of her own shadow. Rick, I was his big brother, he was duty-bound to love me. Nobody had ever just loved me . . . until you. But I didn’t have faith in your love. I believed that you wouldn’t feel the same way about me if you knew about how I’d let him hit me and learned about what an absolute coward I was. How could you possibly respect me once you understood how I had crawled to get away from him? How I had begged and pleaded with him not to hurt me, how I had pissed myself in fear and pain—more than once . . .” His voice broke on those last words, and she watched his face contort as he fought to control his emotions.
She was a lost cause. Her face was streaming with tears, and she reached for him but he flinched away and got up to pace to the window. He didn’t want her to touch him, and she wept for the lonely, hurt child he had been and for the emotionally distant and psychologically scarred man that he had become. He was sharing what he felt were his most shameful secrets, and it broke her heart that he thought this was his shame and not that of the pathetic excuse of a man who had fathered him.
“I never felt like I deserved you,” he said, keeping his rigid back to her. “But like I told you before, I just couldn’t stay away from you after that first meeting. I kept making and breaking promises with myself just to spend time with you. When I proposed to you, I thought that I could manage the relationship; that I could keep your love for myself without tainting you, without hurting you. God, what a miserable job I did of that.” He started pacing in front of the window, prowling back and forth like a restless lion and shoving his hands into the pockets of his tailored trousers.
“The night you told me you were pregnant . . .” He stopped moving and grimaced as if the memory pained him as much as it did her. He allowed himself a quick, haunted glance at her before turning away again. “I went off the deep end, Bron. I panicked. I couldn’t be a father, not with my history. What if I hit our baby, what if I started hitting you? My mother always told me that my father never touched her until after I was born. She never said as much, but she made me feel like the catalyst to all that violence! What if I was the same? What if our baby’s birth triggered the same reaction in me? What if I hurt you? I c-couldn’t stand that thought, Bron. But then I ended up hurting you anyway, didn’t I? I hurt you with my wild accusations and the irrational and stupid things that I said. Words can be even more painful than fists, I knew that, but I still couldn’t seem to stop myself! I didn’t even believe the crap I was saying. And I honestly did think that you would end up hating me for getting you pregnant in the middle of your studies, that you would grow to resent me.” He shook his head and sat down opposite her again.
“This is going to sound like some lame, stupid excuse, but that night, when I told you to leave, I wanted to give myself time to think and to breathe. I never meant for you to leave the house, Bron, just the room. I calmed down almost immediately and realized what a fool I was being. I didn’t know what kind of father I’d be, but I figured that with you by my side I could possibly be okay. I’d taken care of Rick practically from the moment he was born, without once hurting him, and the thought of raising a hand to you is so abhorrent that it sickens me. I stopped thinking of us as a couple and started imagining what it would be like to be a family. The thought of anyone, especially me, hurting you or Kayla is unbearable, but how do I know something won’t set me off someday? How can you ever trust me around her, knowing what you do about me now?”
Bronwyn had her hands pressed over her mouth again as she tried to muffle her sobs, but she was wholly incapable of preventing the tears from flowing down her cheeks. She was a mess. She wanted to go to him but she knew he would not permit it, not until after he had said his piece. Yes, the emotional wound had been lanced, but the pus that had been festering away beneath the surface for so long had to drain before the healing process could begin.
“I’d just made up my mind to tell you everything,” he continued in the same rambling, disorganized way that had characterized his entire monologue up till now. He was bouncing between the past and the present—just stating his thoughts as they popped into his head. “I heard your car starting up and I panicked, I was so sure that you would hurt yourself. I immediately gave chase and had my accident. Thinking I saw you there, I think it was the only way I could cope with having driven you away. I think that my subconscious had to have you betray me, because it gave me an excuse to tell myself that I hated you. I needed that excuse because knowing that I was to blame both for your leaving as well as for my deafness would have sent me even further off the deep end.
“But I never stopped looking for you, Bron, and it wasn’t just about finding the baby. I think that part of me always knew that you would never have done what I accused you of doing, so I had to find you to be sure you were both okay. I was so ashamed of my behavior that I even withheld the news of your pregnancy from Rick and Pierre. What I’d done was completely inexcusable, and both Pierre and Rick would have had no qualms about letting me know that.” He raised his eyes to hers and winced when he saw her tears. His jaw clenched and his hands curled into tight fists before he lowered himself from the sofa to kneel directly in front of her chair. He placed his hands on the armrests, effectively caging her in, but she didn’t feel trapped. Far from it. She felt . . . liberated.
“I was such a fool, Bronwyn.” His voice had lowered and she wasn’t sure he knew that he was speaking barely above a whisper. She had to strain to hear him. “I’m a wreck of a man and I brought you into this hell with me and ruined your life in the process.”
“You didn’t ruin my life,” she protested, but he shook his head at her denial—not believing her.
“It sounds crazy to say that I loved you too much and that my love destroyed us, but I feel like that’s what happened. I’m toxic. I’ve always known that and to even consider a fresh start with you . . .” He laughed bitterly. “I’m a selfish idiot.
“Do you love me?” she asked him quietly, and he blinked at the question
“What?” he asked blankly.
“Well, you just said that you loved me ‘too much.’” She rolled her eyes. “As if that’s such a bad thing. But you used the past tense. So do you still love me?”
“That’s a stupid question,” he growled.
“It’s a valid question,” she dismissed.
“Of course I love you,” he nearly shouted. “It’s not a question of me not loving you—”
“I beg to differ,” she interrupted, waving her hands at him. “It’s very much a question of you not loving me. You never told me you loved me. Not once.”
“Okay, when we married, quite honestly, I didn’t even know I loved you. I told you, I’d never had anyone love me for no reason before. I didn’t bloody know what love was!” His voice rose on the last three words, but she merely raised her eyebrows at him.
“Do you know what it is now?”
“Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, I know.”
“Well?”
“It’s . . . it’s . . .” He floundered for a few moments before inhaling deeply. “It’s everything, isn’t it? It’s the quiet dinners when not much gets said. It’s the sunny days at the beach. It’s hearing your laughter in my head when I see Kayla giggling. It’s seeing the love in your eyes when you watch our baby sleep. It’s watching the sun rise in your smile and set in your tears. It’s the contentment in seeing you eat and sleep and study and play. It’s the small, everyday things, like never getting tired of watching you tuck that same stubborn strand of hair behind your ear twenty times a day, and it’s the huge life-altering things like seeing your smile and my eyes on our beautiful little girl’s face. It’s knowing that even if you turn away from me forever, I’ll always be the better for having had you in my life.”
She leaned forward and stared deeply into his grave blue eyes for an endless moment before reaching out to cup his strong and stubbled jaw with her slender hands. He had trustingly laid his beautiful, wounded soul into her keeping, and she would protect it fiercely.
“There you are,” she whispered wonderingly as the edges of her lips tilted up into a tiny smile. She formed her words as clearly as she could, not wanting him to misunderstand her. “I’ve been looking for you.” His stern brows lowered in confusion, and she leaned down to press a feather-soft kiss to his sensuous lips before easing back so that he could see her face again.
“There’s the man I married.”
His eyes widened as her words registered. He swallowed and then swallowed again, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the movement. She watched him valiantly try to keep it together, to remain strong as usual—but her steady gaze seemed to completely unravel him. His shoulders heaved as he drew in a convulsive breath, and the sound that tore loose from his chest when he exhaled again was an unmistakable sob.
“It’s okay,” she said, stroking one hand down the side of his face, and it was that gentle touch that undid him completely. His face crumpled, his eyes filled, and he finally, finally, dropped every single defense that he had built up over the years and allowed himself to weep. He tried to turn away. Even after everything that he had just revealed, his first instinct was to weather this storm of emotion alone; but Bronwyn wouldn’t let him.
She put her arms around his neck and held on tight. His head dropped into her lap and she folded herself over him so that she was wrapped around him. She crooned the same soothing little sounds that she used when Kayla cried, hoping that he could feel the slight vibrations coming from her chest and throat. His weeping was raw, violent, and gut-wrenching. Her own tears had all but blinded her, but she was determined to be strong for him, and she refused to allow them to overwhelm her. This moment was for this beautiful man who was so very terrified of allowing himself to be happy.
“It’s okay,” she whispered into his hair. “It’s okay, Bryce.” The words were ridiculously inadequate of course. It was very far from okay, but she was still processing the ugly truth and trying to figure out how to deal with everything he had revealed. He was so very, very damaged, but his revelations only gave her deep and abiding love for him a sharply protective edge. She would be damned if she’d allow him to spend one more second thinking that he wasn’t deserving of her love. She now understood that the mistakes he had made had been his twisted and misguided attempts to protect her from the monster he believed himself to be. The realization was heartrending, and her scorching tears slid silently down her face and into his soft hair.
It felt like hours later when his sobs came to a shuddering stop. For a moment he simply allowed himself to rest in her arms, before she felt the tension creep back into his big body, and he lifted himself out of her loving hold and moved to stand beside the window again. He kept his eyes averted as he self-consciously tugged at his dress shirt, which had wrinkled beyond repair. She watched as his ravaged face closed up and shook her head with a sigh before standing up and placing herself squarely in front of him, giving him no option but to meet her eyes.
She had carefully weighed all of her possible responses to his tormented disclosures and knew that there was only one way to play this without stomping all over his fragile male pride.
“You’re an idiot,” she said quietly, and he blinked in confusion.
“I don’t . . .”
“How could you even think that you’re capable of hurting Kayla or me?” she asked, rolling her eyes to convey exasperation. “We’ve had some huge arguments in the past, and I’ve never felt remotely threatened by you.”
“Bronwyn, I always walked out in the middle of our arguments, remember? It used to drive you crazy, but every time I felt myself getting too angry, I’d rein in my temper and walk out because I was so terrified that I would hurt you physically.”
“Bryce, what’s the angriest you’ve ever been with me?” she asked him gently, and he shrugged helplessly.
“When you told me you were pregnant?” His statement came out in question form, as if he wasn’t entirely sure of his answer.
“No you weren’t angry then,” she denied. “You were afraid to allow yourself to hope and lashed out because of that fear. I know that now. I’m talking about real anger. The kind that makes you feel like your head’s going to explode.”
“I don’t know.” He looked confused. “I don’t think that I’ve ever allowed myself to get too angry with you,” he admitted, and she snorted, showing her disdain with a dismissive flick of her wrist.
“Please, I can recall several incidents off the top of my head. Like the time I told Rick that you enjoyed getting the occasional manicure with me. You were so furious you were practically breathing steam.”
“Okay, I was pissed off,” he admitted uncomfortably, looking a little uncertain. “Justifiably so, since Rick has never really let me hear the end of it. He still makes the odd snarky comment about it. But that’s petty stuff. I’d hardly hurt you over something so trivial.”
“Oh? Your father never beat you over trivial things then? Like a three-year-old’s accidently dropping a watch into a toilet bowl?”
“It was a gold watch,” he muttered.
It was a watch! she signed fiercely. “Gold, diamonds, whatever. Breaking a three-year-old child’s arm because of it isn’t a normal reaction. What if Kayla did the same thing? Would you hit her? Break her arm?” He paled at the question and shook his head in unconscious rejection.
“No, you wouldn’t,” she answered for him. “Of course you wouldn’t.”
“I don’t . . .”
“What about when we were on our honeymoon and I danced with Sasha Tisdale? You nearly went purple with jealousy.”
“You still remember that jerk’s name?” he asked incredulously. The same jealousy flared in his eyes again, and she grinned irreverently.
“Well he was really, really good looking,” she reminded, and he glowered, starting to look less shocked and more like the arrogant man she knew and loved beyond all reason.
“Seriously? You think that second ‘really’ was warranted?”
“I only left off the third one in deference to your fragile ego,” she teased. “Bryce, you were beyond irrational about that dance. You were jealous and possessive but nowhere near violent. Now, I’m no expert, but from what I’ve read about abusive spouses, they barely need an excuse to trigger the violence. Even when you were emotionally hurtful—even then—you were punishing yourself more than me.” She switched to sign language. It’s just not in your nature to be violent.
How do you know that? How can you be sure? he asked, his eyes were filled with anguished uncertainty, and she cupped his jaw before going up on her toes to plant a kiss on his gorgeous mouth.
“Because even at your most irrational, when I thought you were kicking me out of the house and then after my return when you seemed to hate me so much . . . I never once feared you. Not once, Bryce.”
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, shutting his eyes and ducking his head. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I’m . . .”
She stopped his words with a soft kiss, and his eyes opened and met hers. She ended the kiss with a smile.
“I know you are,” she acknowledged. “I forgive you, Bryce, and I love you very much.”
“You do?”
She nodded.
“Of course I do. I don’t think that our problems have been miraculously resolved by any means. I think that we have a long, hard road ahead of us actually. But I think that we can finally move forward.”
“I’ve been going back to therapy,” he admitted softly. “It’s been . . . helpful.”
“I hope that we can go together sometime,” she said, and he nodded.
“I’d like that.” He stared down at her with something like awe in his eyes before shaking his head in disbelief. “How the hell did I get so lucky?”
“I got lucky too, you know,” she pointed out, and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Last night I said that I fell in love with a man not a superhero. But you know what? You are my hero, Bryce.”
“How can you say that after everything that’s happened and everything that you’ve heard tonight?”
“Bryce, if anything, tonight has taught me that you’re the kind of man who would place himself squarely between his family and any threat. Of course you’re a hero. Mine, Kayla’s, Rick’s . . . never doubt that.”
Bryce stared down into the tear-ravaged face of this woman who meant the world to him and saw sincerity shining up at him. It was in her eyes and in her smile, and the relief that coursed through his body nearly buckled his knees. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he really felt like everything was going to work out. That somehow, against all odds, he had managed to redeem himself and win his wife back. The panic and fear that he’d been living with for more than two years—no, even longer than that—since they had first married, was dissipating and he felt years younger. He captured her mouth with his own and kissed her with desperation that bordered on obsessive. When he eventually felt able to let her go, they were both flushed and breathless.
“I’m going to marry you someday, Bronwyn Kirkland Palmer,” he told her with a cocky grin, and she licked her lips dazedly.
“Do you have a timeline on that wedding date, Mr. Palmer?” she asked him sweetly.
“Hey, don’t rush me, lady. We’ve only just started dating. I have big plans for this courtship, you know.”
“Oh? What kind of plans?” she asked, curious, rubbing her body sensuously against his. He smiled gently before cupping her face and tilting her head back for another one of his drugging kisses.
“You’re just going to have to wait and see,” he muttered, his voice alive with promise.
