Page 32 of Carry On (Love Doesn’t Cure All #4)

NASH

Ground rule number one: there was no way in hell I was letting the system that made him change me.

The system doesn’t care about you, the voice reminded me.

I bit back a sigh. Ever since my decision to take Lincoln up on the offer, it had been particularly loud and insistent. Bread helped. I wasn’t sure why the bread helped—maybe because it kept me occupied—but at the end of the day, I was grateful for it.

Across the table, Lincoln wrote the rule down on his little pad of paper.

The sight made me smile. Always so refined and proper.

It was actually kind of adorable, though I kept that thought to myself.

There were a lot of little things about him that had crept their way under my skin.

Things I adored. Things I didn’t belong adoring.

“You don’t need to write this shit down,” I told him, even though I knew it was pointless. I had a feeling Lincoln couldn’t live without his lists and insane organization. Everything about his place and his personality screamed his desperate need for control.

“It’s not just for me,” he said. “It’s for you as well.”

“Steel trap,” I retorted and tapped a finger to my temple. Unfortunately, that much was true. I remembered more shit than I wanted to. Fuck, what I wouldn’t give to forget.

“Well, I like organization,” Lincoln replied. Of course he did. “I have a list of questions as well. Things to help us get to know each other.”

“Not really seeing why we need to get to know each other,” I told him. There was no point in doing so.

“We have to know each other.”

“Why?”

“People don’t get married if they don’t know each other.”

“Sure they do, especially when insurance fraud is involved.”

Getting personal wasn’t important. It wasn’t needed.

Things would be easier if we didn’t. I wasn’t in this for the long haul.

I’d made a promise to Jay that I’d try to drag my ass out of the bottom of the barrel.

I didn’t think I could do it, but he said I owed it to myself.

I didn’t need to add getting personal with Lincoln to my list of things to do.

The tasks at hand were daunting enough without factoring that in.

“Yeah, well, that won’t work here,” Lincoln retorted, immediately irritating the hell out of me. “There are certain people we have to convince that this is real. These people are lawyers who take their oaths seriously.”

“I don’t give a fuck what they think.” I wasn’t a goddamn circus monkey for him to put on display.

Like they’d ever think twice about you, the voice commented.

“If we don’t convince them and they report it, you and I are both in deep shit,” he said. “I’m not asking you to like them, I’m not saying you and I even need to be friends, but if we don’t know even basic shit about each other like our middle names, people will notice.”

“I thought we agreed that my middle name was Difficult,” I shot back, unable to stop myself. Despite how fucking annoyed I was, I liked the little smirk that it afforded me. “Look, I don’t give a fuck about what any of them think.”

“Well, I do.”

“Well, you shouldn’t.” I resisted rolling my eyes. “So, you got married. Big deal. Who fucking cares? What does it matter what they think?”

“Because they’ve never heard of you, they don’t know you, and they know me,” he replied.

With every passing moment, his tone grew increasingly more irritated with me.

He pushed away his plate and leaned back in his chair, his jaw ticking as he considered me.

Watched me. Studied me like a goddamn experiment, like he was calculating the best way to explain himself to me.

“You have to understand that I don’t make brash decisions.

I’m not the kind of man who would just marry a guy on a whim, especially not someone that no one in my life even knows exists.

It’ll be hard enough to make it make sense to them, but if I don’t know a damn thing about you?

Or vice versa? We might as well report the insurance fraud ourselves. ”

Jesus fuck, this man.

“Then tell them it’s a…” I waved my hand in the air, trying to make my point make sense, “… whirlwind romance or some stupid shit like that.”

Even as I said it, he was shaking his head.

“That won’t work.”

“We’ll figure it out as we go.”

“Still won’t work.”

This stubborn fucking man.

“Yeah, it will,” I retorted. My own frustrations began to inch their way toward the surface, pushing up against my skin. He was making this more difficult than it needed to be.

Or maybe he just wants you to walk out the door, the voice chimed in. He doesn’t want to deal with you. Not really. It’s all just an act. You weren’t supposed to say yes.

“No, it won’t.”

“Oh, come on—”

“No—”

“And why the fuck not?”

“Because this won’t be my first marriage!” Lincoln exclaimed, practically shouting over me. “Jesus fucking Christ! Just listen to me when I say it won’t work!”

And so I shut up and listened, only for him not to say a damn word. We sat in silence instead while Lincoln visibly struggled with the admission. He was married before. I let that one sink in and tried not to get ahead of myself about why he wasn’t anymore.

How long we sat there was beyond me. He stared across the room, his gaze hard on the floor, and I picked apart a piece of bread to pass the time.

“I was married,” he finally said.

“I gathered that,” I replied, not knowing what else to say.

“I got divorced six years ago,” he continued as if he hadn’t heard me.

I wanted to ask questions—mostly to satiate my curiosity—but kept my mouth shut.

The hollowness in his voice wasn’t lost on me.

I recognized that level of emotional detachment.

I knew it intimately. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get the full story out of him.

“I’m not gay, but I knew really early on that I’m not straight either.

I never hid it growing up, but I never talked about it either.

Honestly, I don’t think my aunt and uncle ever knew.

I was so focused on getting good grades and getting the fuck out of Pine Creek that I never focused on dating.

“I met Chris when I was fresh out of law school. He was smart, handsome, and he was… he was obsessive,” he whispered.

“You know what I mean… that can’t get enough of you kind of obsession.

He’d show up at my work or the courthouse or restaurants just to see me.

He’d give me little presents or bring me coffee or some bullshit to buy my affection.

It was cute, but looking back, he stalked me, and I was completely oblivious to it. ”

I made a sound but kept my thoughts to myself. It was kind of ironic when it came down to it, considering the lengths he went to tracking me down.

“That’s different,” Lincoln snapped.

“I didn’t say a fucking word.” I shrugged.

“Yeah, but I know what you were thinking,” he said. “It’s not the same. I wouldn’t hurt you, and it was never about controlling you. And I know how that sounds.”

“I didn’t say a fucking thing, Linc,” I replied and pointedly popped a piece of bread in my mouth, as if that’d prove my point.

“Whatever,” he muttered. No matter what I said, the comparison hung in the air between us and burrowed its way under his skin.

“He moved fast… really fast, but I was so impulsively in love with the man that it only made sense to move in together after a few months. A marriage proposal after six months was fine. A shotgun wedding right after… completely normal. I mean, why not, right? We were in love, and we knew what we wanted. We didn’t need anything more than that. ”

I knew enough about relationships like that to know where this was going.

“It was a gradual build,” Lincoln continued.

“It wasn’t like he turned into a monster overnight.

A moment here, a moment there… a bad day here, a bad day there.

Gifts, groveling, and promises that it’d never happen again.

And every time, it happened again, but I kept telling myself that it’d be okay, that we were all just one bad day away from losing our temper. ”

Except one bad day didn’t mean we treated people like crap. I held my tongue, refusing to add to the conversation unless he invited the interaction. What he was sharing… it was deeply intimate and personal. I shouldn’t have been privy to such memories.

“My breaking point was our anniversary,” he told me.

“He planned a vacation for us. It wasn’t on our anniversary, it was a few months after, but it counted.

I told myself it’d be okay, that a vacation would do us good.

The whole way there, everything was wrong.

We didn’t leave on time because a case held me up, and then traffic was backed up, which was my fault because I worked too much…

because I cared more about my job than I did about him.

And then we didn’t get there before the restaurant he wanted to go to closed.

“It was just all these little things that just added up the whole day. I wasn’t in the mood. Hell, I didn’t even want to stay. I offered for us to go home. He snapped like I’d never seen before… hit me harder than he ever had before.

“And like always, he tried to make it up to me, but I wasn’t having it.

I don’t know… I just…” He shook his head like he didn’t have the words.

“He wanted to after… and I wasn’t in the mood…

and that was the wrong answer. I only managed to fight him off for a few minutes before he hit me hard enough to knock me out.

“When I woke up…” His voice cracked slightly, and he cleared his throat. “I knew how I felt, I knew the damage that had been done, and I didn’t have to ask.”

My heart sank.

”I could fill in the blanks, and I knew I couldn’t stay anymore. I played nice, I said what I needed to say, and did what I needed to do to survive the rest of our vacation.

“As soon as we came home, he left for work one day, and I called in sick. A few friends came over and helped me move out. I stayed with them for a while because it was just safer than being home. I fought like hell for a divorce, and well… the rest is history.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?” After something like that—any of it—the guy should’ve been in jail. I frowned as he let out a disgusted sound.

“The boys in blue always back each other, no questions asked,” he replied softly.

Fuck. His ex-husband was the detective from the night he kept me from going to jail.

That explained a lot, unfortunately. “Besides… it’s hard enough for a man to say he’s been sexually assaulted and have people believe him; it’s damn near impossible when you’re married.

I know the stories. It’s not sexual assault if you’re married, it’s…

a disagreement between spouses. It’s all just a bunch of fucking bullshit. ”

“Why didn’t you leave him sooner?” I asked.

“Ah, yes, blame the victim,” Lincoln scoffed, shaking his head.

“That’s always the question, isn’t it? Why didn’t they leave?

Why didn’t they report it? It’s never why did they hit?

Why did they rape? Why did they do whatever awful fucking shit they did?

We don’t talk about that, do we? No, it’s just easier to attack the victim with demands about why they didn’t do what you think they should’ve. ”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“You’re not sorry,” he snapped. “You’re uncomfortable with realizing every time you’ll inadvertently question the victim and never the abuser.

The narrative we’re fed isn’t that there must be something wrong with the abuser for doing what they did.

No, it’s that there has to be something wrong with the victim for letting it happen, right? For staying? For not fighting back?”

I held my tongue because what could I say to that?

Maybe if you learned to shut up, you wouldn’t hurt people so much, the voice commented.

“I’ll be back,” Lincoln announced as he pushed away from the table. Without waiting for my response, he left the room.

See, you fucked up, the voice continued. You couldn’t even comfort him.

Yeah, I couldn’t disagree with that. Lincoln needed more out of me than just silence and questioning accusations in the face of awfulness.