Page 69 of Distracted
This woman.
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse for her, they did.
Even though I understood every word she was saying, I was still so utterly confused. None of it made any sense.
After taking in a deep breath, I lifted my head from my hands and returned my attention to her. “You didn’t love him?”
She shook her head. “No. Never.”
“But then, I don’t understand,” I admitted. “Why would you ever get married to him?”
Ellery didn’t respond immediately. In fact, she remained silent with a rather stoic look on her face, and I had a feeling that she was giving me time to brace. This wasn’t going to be good. Whatever she was about to share with me was going to be huge. It was going to wreck me, and I wasn’t sure there was any amount of time she could have given me that would have been enough for me to be able to cope with it all.
“I was a nineteen-year-old virgin when I agreed to get married to Patrick,” she said softly. “I agreed to marry a man I wasn’t in love with in order to save my family from devastation and humiliation.”
My heart felt like it had stopped beating in my chest as I stared at her, feeling completely dumbfounded and horrified at her words.
I couldn’t bring myself to speak. What had I been thinking?
That was a stupid question to ask myself. I already knew what had been going through my mind. I was being selfish and thinking only of what I wanted when I asked her to spend the day with me today. And I certainly wasn’t considering all that she might have gone through that led her to Harper Security Ops from the start when I asked her if I could kiss her.
Needing a minute to try to come to grips with the knowledge that she’d been essentially forced into marriage, I twisted my body and fell to my back in the bed. My fingertips were pressing into my forehead as I stared up at the ceiling, trying and failing to accept all that she’d just shared.
I didn’t think acceptance would ever be possible.
“Kane?”
God, her sweet voice saying my name was everything, and yet, I felt nothing but anger pulsing through me. She had endured things that no woman should have endured, and I was beginning to believe I didn’t even know the half of it.
I dropped my hand from in front of my face and rolled my head to the side to look at her. With the blanket still covering her body, she turned toward me and asked, “Will you hold me?”
Damn it.
That was the least I could have done.
She’d been sitting here believing this was the most beautiful experience of her life, and I was too caught up in my emotions about all she’d just revealed, that I’d failed to give her what she deserved.
I held my arm out, a sign that she could come close, and the moment she was close enough to touch, I pulled the blanket up over my own waist and curled her tightly into my chest.
She wasn’t there more than a few seconds when she said, “I feel like I should tell you what happened, but I’m afraid that might be a bad idea.”
“What makes you say that?”
Ellery lifted her cheek from my chest, brought her eyes to mine, and answered, “It seems like you’re already struggling with what you’ve learned. I’ve never seen you like this, so I don’t know if it’s wise to share anything else.”
Instant regret.
That was all I felt.
I reached my free hand up to the side of her face, where I pushed a lock of her hair back away from her cheek and tucked it behind her ear.
“I’m sorry, Ellery,” I apologized. “I’m sorry for all that you’ve been through, but I’m especially sorry that I’m not handling the news of it well at all. I want you to share the truth with me, and I promise you that I’ll keep my emotions in check.”
A small smile spread across her face. The sight of it helped to ease some of the tension I felt moving through my body.
“It warms my heart to know that you care this deeply,” she said. “There was never anything like that between him and me. I was merely a pawn in a game, and even knowing that, if I had to do it again, I would.”
My brows knit together, pain slicing through me at her admission. “But why? Why would you do this to yourself?”