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I try to turn around but a strong arm that surrounds my waist prevents me. I open my eyes and I observe him with impudence. His sculptural body rests at my side totally relaxed. One leg crosses over mine and his hand clings to my breasts like a shipwrecked person to his lifeline. The rebellious black hair covers part of his beautiful face. He's so handsome that it unbalances my security. How are you here? What have you seen in me? Will you leave someday?
“I want to be what you need...” I whisper thinking him asleep.
“You are.”
“I thought you were asleep.” I amusingly answer.
“If I say I'm awake you’ll stop combing my hair with your fingers and I don’t want you to.”
He answers by hugging me with more intensity.
“You're so handsome that you drive me crazy.”
I stroke his cheeks and kiss him madly in love as I climb over his drowsy body.
“That's fine. I want you to go nuts for me.”
“Oh yeah? That, Mr. Blackman, is pure macho pride. Where is the man who is cold, insensitive and disinterested in feminine feelings?
“I'm only interested in yours. Say it...”
“What do you want me to say? That I’m crazy for your body or that I love you madly.”
“Both...”
With his body under mine completely relaxed, he raises his hands and locks my face to get my full attention.
“Say it.”
“I love you so much.”
Our lips meet and I respond to his kiss but not with the same passion as always.
“Anne?”
I look at him and I tremble at the thought of losing him. A few simple hours without his company becomes unbearable but if I want this to work I can’t be the only one to be honest in this relationship. The secrets will only lead us down a path of doubts and fears that will crush us.
“Reed, I love you.”
“But?” His voice is serious and his body tenses under mine.
God I don’t want this, I don’t intend to take it away.
“I have opened my heart and I have told you my nightmares. It hasn’t been easy but you deserve to know my fears, to know the reason for my reactions. I never told anyone because I’m ashamed. I didn’t have the courage to get out of that situation and today I blame myself for it.”
“You were not to blame. That son of a bitch did it,” he bites his lips with rage not to continue.
“He raped me. You can say it. I now, after so much time, I’m able to accept it and recognize it. I was his wife but he abused me whenever he wanted.”
“No! I can’t listen to this. I hate him with so much strength that I’m afraid of myself.”
He gets up quickly leaving me lying and desolate on the bed while he puts on his pants without the underpants.
“It's my reality, I'm this person. The woman in front of you is the one who has been built on the foundations of her past.”
I get up totally naked of body and feelings. I stroke his damaged back and kiss him tenderly.
“I hate him. I hate what he did to you, I hate that you remember him, I hate that he had you under his body, I hate that you loved him...”
I sigh, understanding his rage and the jealousy that dominates him. If the case were the opposite, it wouldn’t be able to take it either.
“We can’t erase who we are but we can improve who we will be.” I stroke his scars on his back waiting for his sincerity.
“My past will push you away from me, I’m simply delaying the inevitable. This has nothing to do with our future.”
“But trust yes. Trust me as I did in you. If we hide in lies, our love won’t make it. Your silence from the past pushes me away from your heart and I don’t want to lose you.”
“No!”
“I agree. It's your decision.”
I go to the closet and I look for a set of clean lingerie and I head to the shower. I don’t want to look him in the eyes my disappointment is too deep. We have no future together if we aren’t able to support each other.
I enter the shower and I hurt when I see that he hasn’t followed me as he always does.
I open the tap and let the warm water hide my tears. The “I love you” are just empty words if they’re not accompanied by facts.
I come out in my underwear to find him sitting on the bed with his hands holding his forehead and his torso totally naked.
“My father physically punished me.”
I stop at the doorframe holding onto it to keep from falling. The pain in his voice penetrates me and makes me sad.
“My mother loved him so much that she only lived for him and by his side. My father represented everything for her neither Gabe nor I ever managed to reach her heart.”
He sighs angrily. His voice changes and his eyes darken when reliving the past.
“She didn’t eat, didn’t walk, didn’t dress or talk if he didn’t order it. Anne... My father was a sadist who enjoyed being brutal to her and she was so submissive that she accepted everything.”
My breathing is agitated, I don’t want to cry but his voice breaks with every word, I have never seen him so vulnerable.
“Sadist of those books?”
“No, those of reality.”
“At only eight years old I rebelled and got between my mother and her punishment but that only got him to unload his whip on my back. She didn’t intervene. She never said or did anything to protect us. He ordered and she complied.”
“You were a little boy...”
“That didn’t bother him at all when he used his whip on me. He was a damn spoiled child unable to understand the feelings and expressions of love in a couple, so he said.”
His face is disheveled and his fists tightly closed at his sides.
“Dolores was our assistant and when she was at home she took care of me like a real mother. She tried to teach me values like love or forgiveness. For her my mother was always a poor sick woman.”
I nod, understanding the explanations that Dolores gave to such a small child.
“I kept getting myself between them again and again trying to defend her but I only got more wounds on my back. When one day Dolores discovered my scars, she took me to live at her home. She has been my mother since then.”
Tears cover my face, how can a human being inflict those wounds on another human being?
“You were just a boy defending his mother.” I hug him tightly while my tears bathe his chest. “I'm sorry... I didn’t want you to suffer, I just tried to get to your heart, I never thought...”
“I can’t do the same thing to you that he did to her.”
“You're not like him.”
“Yes, yes I am. I want to control everything, there’s no chance of getting back the life I had, and I can’t bear it. I like to dominate everything that surrounds me and I’m an insensitive damn fool who is incapable of loving his own mother.”
“You love me.”
“I'm the worst person that could cross your path.”
“Don’t talk like that about yourself.”
“It's true, I'm a fucking selfish ass despite all the shit around me, I don’t plan on letting you go.”
His hands frame my face and his fingers dry my tears.
“We are both beings united by pain and lack of love.”
The road is long and I don’t believe in rose-colored dreams but we’re sincere and we are willing to heal the wounds and accept our shortcomings. Fears govern me and their secrets obscure it but we are together. Self-esteem, breathe hopeful.
