Breastfeeding gives you a lot of time to think. And Griffin's absolute favorite thing in the world to do was eat.
And eat.
And eat.
So, I had a lot of time to think.
And think.
And think.
In the week since Kade had kidnapped me -- I don't care what he called it, he straight out kidnapped me -- there hadn't been much on my mind other than that conversation. Well, OK, not so much a conversation as it was a monologue since I hadn't been allowed to say anything. But the effect was the same. He'd hit me with a lot while I was held captive in the cab of his truck, so much that my mind was still trying to process everything he'd told me.
Since then, my emotions had bounced between disbelief (Oh, now he loves me so, so much?) to anger (Why did he wait until NOW to tell me all this?) to hope (Could he really mean everything he said?) aaand back to anger (Does he really think anything he just said could possibly make a difference now after the way he treated me?).
The funny thing was, when Kade and I had been together, I'd never been angry about the way Charlotte seemed to be a ghostly presence between us. Mostly I'd been somewhat sad and uneasy, accepting of the fact that I'd become involved with a widower and that obviously meant baggage, but so in love with Kade that I'd been willing to overlook the danger signs just to greedily cling to the scraps I was getting from him. It was only after he proposed to me (and I was using the term loosely) and I'd said no that my anger asserted itself.
Looking back, the months I'd been away and Griffin had been bubbling inside of me is when the anger and bitterness toward Kade (that started with the proposal fiasco) really began to grow and build. What the hell had been wrong with me that I had always been trying harder and harder to make Kade love me, to make him see that I was as worthy of love as Charlotte? Why was I so bent on keeping a man who couldn't seem to get past his first wife and who didn't seem to care for me anywhere near as much as he cared for her? I'd accepted so much in the name of love that I'd completely lost my backbone. How I was able to function without a spine was bordering on miraculous.
But never again would I make that mistake; never again would I be so desperately in love that I'd be willing to accept scraps instead of holding out for a man who was as all-in as I was. I think I'd bought into that bogus shit about sometimes you have to be the one giving one hundred and fifty percent in a relationship, sometimes you have to do all the work, give more, expect less. All that kind of stupid thinking bought you was unbalanced scales where you did the heavy lifting, allowing the other person to get away with not pulling his weight or being checked out a majority of the time. You both have to be fighting for, working for a relationship or there really isn't much of a relationship when you think about it. Giving and giving and giving without getting anything back destroys you a little more each day. Next time I gathered the courage to date someone, I wanted a man who was going to come at me hard, who left no doubt at all that I was the one he wanted, the woman he chose above all others.
Granted, Kade had said he was going to be coming at me hard now, but I didn't trust him given our past. Especially since he hadn't said one word about all of those words he'd thrown at me during my kidnapping. Not one word about it. Not even any thoughtful, contemplative glances had been thrown my way in the last week. And I should know because I'd been watching for them. Yeah, I admit it.
In fact, watching him breeze around my house with Griffin as if he didn't have a care in the world, you'd never know this was a man who had kidnapped me to tell me he loved me, that my leaving him had messed him up worse than anything ever had before in his life and he'd sold his precious home he'd built for Saint Charlotte right after I turned him down. Could baby brain make you hallucinate an entire kidnapping and conversation? Because I was beginning to feel like I'd imagined the whole episode.
