Page 125 of Love Marks

“Quinn Helena Taylor.”

I know she doesn’t mean for the words to crush me entirely. She’s always scolded me by using my full name, ever since I was a kid. But the memory of my name on Wesley’s lips, of the first time we met, has the tears I’ve been pushing down for weeks spilling over and running down my face.

“Baby.” My mom wraps her arms around me. “Talk to me.”

Another sob cracks through my chest and I start talking through the tears, retelling fragments of what happened with Wesley. By the time I finish, we’re sitting on the floor with boxes around us, my tears drying.

I take a shaky breath and blow my nose into a tissue. “I just miss him. A lot. I know I told him to leave, and I know it’s for the best, but I guess I thought he would fight for me. That’s stupid, and unfair, and he deserves better, he deserves someone to fight for him, too, and I just can’t but…I still feel so alone.”

My mom rubs soft circles on my back, whispering soothing words until I finally stop shaking. I take a few more deep breaths before I feel steady, and shoot her a soft, embarrassed smile.

She waits for a moment before she speaks. “You know, you’ve always been guarded. Even when you were a kid, I always swore you were my superhero, not the other way around. So strong.” She brushes my hair back behind my ear.

“But sometimes being strong means allowing yourself to be weak. To fall down. Love means giving someone the power to hurt you. And he will hurt you, Quinn. You’ll hurt him. But he’ll also love you.”

Her words hang in the air between us. She must sense that they’ve hit me some place deep because she squeezes my arm and presses her lips to my forehead.

“You just have to ask yourself: will the love be stronger than the hurt?”

* * *

The first night alone in my apartment is a hard one. After my mom leaves with Joe, I spend the remainder of the night drinking wine and stuffing my face with Chinese food. It doesn’t make me feel any better and even my third Amanda Bynes movie can’t cure the loneliness coursing through me.

Will the love be stronger than the hurt?

I keep replaying my mom’s words over and over in my head like a mantra. I just don’t know how to handle the fear that comes with all of this. I’m scared enough of losing my mom and already she’s slipping away from me. What if I lose Wesley? What if I already have? What if I’m too late, if I’ve hurt him too much?

I scoop a mouthful of cookie dough ice cream into my mouth with a sigh. I never thought of myself as a coward before, but that’s what I am. A complete and utter coward. Too scared to really try things with Wesley. Too scared he’ll hurt me again, or walk away, or somehow, somehow it won’t work out.

Because it never has before.

I never really gave dating a chance when I was younger. I was too focused on making money. Trying to keep our bills paid. Nothing else really mattered to me. Making friends, dating, following my dreams — they all took a backseat to surviving.

But the last few months…everything changed. He changed everything. Somehow, along the way, I found Hannah, and a job where I really got to develop my skills as a chef. Finally the life I’d always dreamed about was within my reach. And what did I do?

I ruined it. By not trusting Wesley. By letting my fear control me. By convincing myself, yet again, that it was too good to be true. Why? Why is it so hard to believe that maybe things would work out?

Because you don’t deserve it.

Derek’s voice calls the words out from within me, and they settle in my chest like they’re right. They feel right. So…familiar. A shudder rocks through me and before I know it, tears are slipping down my face. Because I am so sick, so tired of hearing his voice in my head. All I want is to be free of it.

When I was doing sex work, I told myself it was just work and nothing more. But the truth is that his words and what happened that night and all the nights before it have haunted me for too long. Every time we’d have sex, he’d find another cruel way to tear me open, but the worst was when he said I deserved it. I deserved to be degraded, to be hurt.

I’d be lying to myself if I said it didn’t feel like that. Like it doesn’t still feel like that sometimes. Because why would it have happened if I didn’t somehow deserve it? If it wasn’t somehow my fault for putting myself in that position to begin with?

Otherwise, there would be no meaning in it at all. No reason. Isn’t that worse somehow?

I take a gasping breath, my tears coming harder. Squeezing my eyes tight, I imagine, for a moment, what Wesley would say if he were here. How his arms would wrap around me and protect me somehow, even if just from myself, from the unkind words bubbling inside me. I can almost hear his no-nonsense voice, the soft brush of his words against my neck.

A fresh wave of wanting rushes through me as images of us together assault me, unrelenting and out of reach. It would be so easy to fall back into his arms if he’d let me. But then what? Another few months pass until something happens and I go running for the hills again? Or worse, I find some way to sabotage us, all because deep down somewhere I don’t think I’m worthy? Because I don’t think I deserve to be happy?

If I let myself keep going on this cycle, keep believing that I don’t deserve good things, the bastard who tried to hurt me wins. A fresh wave of anger resurfaces at the thought.

I can’t let that happen. I can’t.

Taking a deep breath, I steady myself, wiping away the last of my tears. My mom was right. This hurts. It hurts so much, and the truth is, it’s probably going to hurt some more. Right now, I’m alone with it, and it feels endless and impossible to overcome, but maybe…maybe if I had someone to share the hurt with, it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe I could eventually be happy.

And maybe, just maybe, I’m ready to let myself.