She was talking about it like it was the past.
“Are you seriously going to give up your whole life for these guys?”
She pinned me with a glare this time. “I’ll give up whatever I want to for love, sex and the babies I’ve always wanted, Nevaeh. What is it to you?”
My face flamed with the heat of shame. Yeah, I deserved that.
“I’m sorry, Claire. I just… always saw you as a woman who was kind of married to her job. Like me.”
I managed to pull my gaze up and meet her eyes. I could see the anger fading, replaced by a kindness that made me want to cry again.
“What really happened to you, Nevaeh? Is it childhood stuff? Or have you been burned too many times?”
This was so not where I wanted this conversation to go.
“I think it may be time I head home.”
I moved to stand up and Claire commanded, “Sit your butt back down. You’re acting like a spoiled little brat, and I want to know what’s going on. And if you won’t tell me, I’ll get Dex to sit on you until you talk and believe me that is two hundred and seventy pounds you don’t want squishing you.”
&n
bsp; A shiver crawled over my neck and I bounced my legs up and down.
“I don’t like to talk about it.”
“No one does.”
She waited and so did I.
Finally, the words crept out of me. “My childhood was okay. We were poor, but my parents did the best they could.”
“Okay… so it’s a guy, then. Is he still around?”
I shook my head. “No, I… have a restraining order on him. He was one of my first boyfriends. You know, bad boy, wrong side of the tracks, all the normal cliché things…” I laughed to cover the tension I felt talking about Trevor.
There was a tight fist in my gut that never really went away. A bone-deep fear that knew I’d never really be free of him.
“But he, uh… got weird, possessive after a while. And I don’t really know why, to be honest, because it’s not like he loved me, or even seemed to like me, actually. But he couldn’t stand me being at work.”
I sniffed and grabbed for a tissue, blowing my nose in an attempt to tell my story without crying. I hated admitting this to anyone.
Admitting that I’d been such a bad judge of character. That in my need for love and acceptance, I’d ended up with a few black eyes and a stalker instead.
“Anyway… it ended badly. I’ve reported him to the police, but he still stalks me. I get messages on my phone, and no matter how many times I change my cell number, or move jobs or apartments, he always finds me. I even moved interstate for a while, but he just followed me. So, I ended up coming back home in the end.”
Claire’s mouth dropped open. “So… let me get this straight. You don’t like men, and understandably so, because your first, and probably only boyfriend was an abusive creep who still stalks you?”
I choked on my own forced laugh. “Yeah, pretty much.”
“And how long ago did all this happen?”
“Um… I was nineteen. I’m twenty-three now, so about four years ago.”
“And you haven’t been with anyone since?”
I shook my head. There was no way I was going anywhere near another man. Unless he proved without a shadow of a doubt, that he was perfectly trustworthy.
And I didn’t know how that would be possible.