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Closing my eyes, I told him. I told him everything that he would do.

How he liked to control me, tell me what to do and what to wear. The names that he would call me and that was all before he had started to use his fists.

“The first time he hit you?” he ground out, staring into my eyes.

“He slapped me for not having his dinner on the table when he came in from work.”

“Son of a bitch,” he swore. I felt him tense underneath me and I made to move off him but he grabbed my legs and held me in place. “Keep going.”

“It wasn’t too bad at first, he only did it every now and again. But…”

“It got worse?” he asked. I could feel his fingers tapping that beat on my legs, a sign that he was trying to stay calm.

“Yeah.” I looked down. “I was so alone, Ty.” I sniffled. “I had no one, not until I came here.”

“Sweetheart,” he murmured.

“Then when I came to work here, something changed.” I said, looking out of the window and into the woods. “I don’t know whether it was me, him or both of us.”

“You became stronger.” Ty’s voice echoed around me as I thought about what had actually made me change.

“It was fine for a while, he’d be nice and want to spend time together. He even took me out that one time,” I reminded him.

“I remember.” He smirked. “That was the hottest cleaning closet I’d ever been in.”

“Ty!” I snorted.

“What? You looked fuckin’ hot and those lips...” He looked down at my lips. My tongue came out on impulse as I licked them, I watched as his eyes flared.

His hands moved around to my butt and he pulled me closer. “Stop!” I giggled, shuffling on his lap. My butt was going dead.

“Okay, Okay,” he said, bringing his hands up in the air. “What happened that day?”

“What day?” I frowned.

“Fuckin’ hell, Kay, the day that you came here looking like you’d gone ten rounds in the ring.”

“Oh.” My teeth sank into my bottom lip, scared to go back there. Not that it was hard, I dreamed about that day most nights. If it wasn’t that day, then you could guarantee Max was in my dreams in some way or another, he was never far away.

“Well, erm…you remember Eli was ill that day?” He nodded his head at me. “You brought us back to the apartment and I still had my vest and belt with me?”

“Yeah.”

“Well I hid them when you went-”

“You hid them?” he asked, frowning.

“Yeah, he didn’t know,” I said, biting my lip.

I didn’t want to admit this to Ty, it was just another secret that was being exposed and I felt vulnerable. But at the same time, I could feel a weight being lifted off my shoulders.

“Didn’t know what?”

“That…I was working here.” I mumbled.

“Wait.” He pulled back. “Why didn’t he know that you were working here?”

“He said that my place was at home, looking after Eli and cleaning the apartment.” I swallowed, taking a deep breath. “But with Eli at preschool, I needed something, Ty. I couldn’t stay in that apartment on my own all day. It was driving me crazy.”