Page 109 of Ride Me Cowboy

Instead, I make a coffee and sit back down on the sofa, resuming my position of catatonic observer of the city.

It’s not quite an hour before the buzzer rings at my door. I move quickly, pulling it inwards, so Elsie hurtles herself toward me and wraps me in a hug.

“I am so sorry,” she says again, crying. “I can’t believe what I said to you. I can’t believe—I just can’t believe—,” She’s crying so hard it’s impossible to speak, so we just hold each other a long time, but in tears, finding it hard to breathe.

But eventually, she pulls away and reaches for my hand, her watery eyes latched to mine.

“I had no idea,” she whispers.

I nod, tears slipping down my cheeks. “I know that. Who would have thought it of him? And for my part, I—,” I hesitate, because this is still her brother. But at the same time, I’ve stepped into the truth now, and I’m going to stay here. “I was terrified of saying or doing anything that might give anyone even a hint of what was going on with us.”

She squeezes her eyes shut, anguish on her features. I appreciate how hard she must find this to grapple with, how much she must still love her brother and feel urged to defend him, even when she knows it’s not possible.

“Els,” I say, pulling her into the apartment, and moving to fridge. I pull out two water bottles, and hand one to her. “What happened?”

She shrugs.

“You didn’t believe me. I thought you’d always feel that way. And now…”

“I told my parents,” she says, twisting the water bottle in her hands, fidgeting like I’ve never seen her do. “I was so angry with you. I thought we should get a legal letter to tell you to stop spreading lies about him. I just wanted everything you’d said to me to go away, and never reappear again.”

So, their parents know. How hard it must have been for them to hear.

“I would do anything to spare them that pain.”

Elsie’s expression shifts. Her eyes flick away quickly. “They knew.”

“What?” I reach behind me for the sofa but find it impossibly far away. It’s a body blow I hadn’t anticipated. I feel like I’ve been hurtled out into the middle of the ocean, and it’s spinning like a vortex beneath me, threatening to suck me down.

“When I told them, mom looked like she was about to pass out. At first I thought it was from shock, but then she looked at dad and said, ‘you told me you’d dealt with this’.”

I find my way to the sofa and sit down heavily, staring out at the view, listening as Elsie continues to talk.

“They didn’t know he was…hurting you. In fact, they were sure he wasn’t. They asked him, Elsie.”

“What?” Disbelief makes my voice high pitched. “What are you talking about?”

“When he was in college, there were two girls they paid off, because they claimed he’d been…rough with them.”

I close my eyes.

“One of the girls, he dated for six months. The other for a year. These weren’t just one-night stands, trying to get rich off our family. They were his girlfriends, and they both had unnervingly similar stories.”

“Oh, God,” I whisper, the betrayal instant and immense. How could they have let me marry him? How could they have let this happen to me? They knew I had no family to protect me, no one who could meet Christopher and look beyond his polished veneer to see the monster beneath.

“He swore they’d just colluded, to get money out of our family. I think my parents really wanted to believe that.”

I shake my head, as something Cole said comes flashing back to me, about the women in Christopher’s past.

“You have to believe me, they thought you were happy. Safe. They honestly believed…”

“They wanted to believe,” I whisper, understanding that. Just like I’d wanted to believe Cole loved me.

“I don’t understand why they didn’t ask you,” she whispers.

I reach out, putting a hand on her thigh. “Even if they had asked me, I would have denied it. I was so scared.”

She blanches visibly. I frown though, remembering fragments of conversations then.And all is going well, Elsie? You seemhappy?“She sort of did ask me,” I say, frowning. “Your mom was always checking in on me, keeping a close eye.”