As Long As I Have You

~ Chapter Fifty Two ~

Kirsten saw the shock and confusion in Evan's eyes and purposefully stepped back until she was out of his reach. Putting space between them was the only way she could gather her strength, and right now she needed all the strength she could conjure to share her long-protected secret.

For too long she worked to forget the awful truth, even when she knew deep down the only way to get past her grief was to walk directly through it. It was the advice her therapist gave her and the same wisdom her parents had tried to impart on her numerous times, but all to no avail. Forgetting had been far preferable when it came to thinking about her doomed marriage, but the same talent that made her art so vivid also cursed her with the unforgettable and graphic images surrounding the death of a deceivingly charming monster.

Evan was right. It was time for the truth once and for all.

"Danny and I were in our last year of law school when he introduced me to one of his friends, Jason Fitzpatrick. Jason was popular, funny, charming, and handsome enough to get away with his arrogance — basically everything you'd expect a twenty-something girl to be attracted to. I knew him by his reputation for dating beautiful sorority girls more than anything, and even though I tried not to get too hung up on him I fell pretty hard. We dated for awhile until graduation, and then he moved back east to join his father's law firm while Dad took me and Danny on at Travis Enterprises. I chalked the relationship up as being over and moved on.

"I don't even know why it happened, but out of the blue Danny got a call from Jason. The three of us caught up with each other and before I knew it I fell for him all over again. He was this handsome and charming guy who checked all the right boxes, and for reasons I couldn't understand he wanted me."

"Kitten," Evan quietly interjected, "you're gorgeous, intelligent, heir to a fortune, and talented as hell. Who wouldn't want that?"

She blushed but didn't acknowledge the string of compliments.

"His family insisted on this huge wedding at their home, and afterwards I relocated so he could continue working at his father's firm. The plan was for me to take some time to explore art programs like I promised my father, and then possibly join Jason in practice depending how things went."

She took a deep breath, and Evan watched as one of her old tells reared its head. She picked nervously at her fingernails and kept her eyes averted from him.

"The first few months were a bit of a whirlwind because we were busy finding a place to live and getting ourselves settled into a routine. We'd never even lived together before we got married — stupid, I know — so I chalked up odd behaviours to the idea that we just needed to find our groove with each other.

"Things happened with such subtlety that I still can't pinpoint when it actually started."

The knot in his stomach suddenly doubled in size. "It?"

She smiled lamely. "Take your pick. Control. Cheating." She paused and then quietly added, "Abuse."

"That sonofabitch," he snarled, and took a step forward to comfort her.

She reflexively took a step back at his show of anger, and Evan caught himself when he realized why she flinched and immediately backed off. He had the overwhelming desire to throw one of the stacked boxes across the room or put his fist through a wall to channel his outrage, but wisely kept his temper in check given this newest revelation of hers.

So much of Kirsten had always been a mystery to him, and now so many of those mysteries made sense. As with Autumn Fire, he never thought to make the connections to his wife, but when he did join the pieces together they all fit perfectly. Why confrontation scared her so much. Why the smallest omissions were perceived to be the largest of deceptions.