Chapter 155

Linnet's POV

"He slapped me cross the face. Hard enough that I lost my balance and fell, hit the floor so hard I saw stars. And for a moment—for several moments, actually—my brain just... stopped. Couldn't process what had just happened. Couldn't reconcile the man who'd been making love to me that morning with the man who'd just knocked me to the ground because I'd laughed at his mistake."

"That bastard," I hissed, the words escaping before I could stop them, and I felt my free hand curl into a fist on the table, felt rage surge through me hot and immediate and absolutely useless because this had happened twenty-three years ago and there was nothing I could do to change it, no way to reach back through time and protect my mother from the violence she'd endured. "Mom, I'm so sorry. You didn't deserve that. You didn't—"

"I know," she said quietly, squeezing my hand. "I know that now. But at the time, I—" She broke off, shaking her head. "At the time, I was in shock. Couldn't think clearly. And Cole, he immediately switched into this frantic apology mode, kept saying he didn't know what came over him, that he'd never meant to hurt me, that the pain from the burns had just made him react without thinking. He even started hitting himself, slapping his own face like he was punishing himself for what he'd done, and I—" Her voice cracked. "I stopped him. Pulled his hands away. Told him it was okay, that I understood, that the burns must have hurt terribly and people do irrational things when they're in pain."

The self-recrimination in her voice was almost worse than the description of the violence itself, and I found myself gripping her hand tighter, trying to anchor her to the present, to the woman she'd become rather than the girl who'd made excuses for her abuser.

"We went to the hospital," Mom continued, her gaze still fixed on some point in the middle distance. "Got his burns treated, and they looked at my face too—I had a split lip and a bruise forming on my cheek. The nurse asked if I was okay, if I felt safe, and I—" She laughed, a hollow sound devoid of humor. "I lied. Said I'd tripped and fallen, that Cole had been trying to catch me and that's how his hands got burned. Protected him. Made myself complicit in the cover-up."

"You were trying to survive," I said firmly, needing her to hear it, needing her to understand that I didn't judge her for the choices she'd made in an impossible situation. "You were scared and confused and you did what you thought you had to do. That doesn't make it your fault, Mom. None of this is your fault."

She looked at me then, really looked at me, and I saw tears gathering in her eyes, saw the gratitude and relief warring with the shame that had clearly been eating at her for decades. "After we got home," she said, her voice barely above a whisper now, "Cole wouldn't stop apologizing. Kept saying it would never happen again, that he loved me, that he'd rather die than hurt me. And I—" She took a shaky breath. "I believed him. Or maybe I just wanted to believe him so badly that I convinced myself it was true. I told myself that people make mistakes, that stress and pain can make anyone act out of character, that this was just a one-time thing that we could move past."

The familiar pattern of abuse was so clear from the outside, so textbook in its progression, but I forced myself to stay silent, to let her tell it in her own words rather than jumping ahead to point out all the ways she'd been manipulated and gaslit.

"We made up," Mom said, and there was something bitter in the way she emphasized those last two words. "Had sex that night. And Cole was so gentle, so attentive, made me feel cherished and loved and safe again. And afterward, when he held me and whispered that he'd never hurt me again, that I was the most important thing in his world—" She broke off, shaking her head. "I believed every word. Told myself that this was just a rough patch, that all couples go through difficult moments, that the important thing was that we loved each other and were committed to making it work."

She fell silent for a long moment, and I watched her face carefully, saw the way her expression shifted from remembered hope to something darker, something that made my blood run cold even before she spoke again.

"Cole is very good at sex, Linnet," she said bluntly, and the clinical way she delivered the statement somehow made it more disturbing than if she'd been emotional about it. "He knows exactly how to touch a woman, how to make her feel desired and beautiful and completely consumed by pleasure. And every time we went to bed together after that first incident, I felt like he loved me. Like maybe the violence had been an aberration, a momentary loss of control that would never happen again because look how tender he was being now, look how much he worshiped my body, look how connected we were in these intimate moments."

She looked at me then, and I saw something like desperation in her eyes, a need for me to understand what she was trying to explain. "I told myself I loved him too," she said. "Told myself that the physical connection we shared was proof of something deeper, something real. And gradually, I let myself forget about that afternoon in the kitchen. Convinced myself it hadn't been as bad as I remembered, that I was overreacting, that it was just one mistake in an otherwise beautiful relationship."

The manipulation was so clear, so obvious in hindsight, but I could see how it would have worked in the moment—how the cycle of violence followed by tenderness would have kept her off-balance, unable to trust her own perceptions, always hoping that this time would be different, that the good version of Cole was the real one and the violent version was the aberration.

"How long?" I asked quietly, needing to know even though I dreaded the answer. "How long before it happened again?"