Cut Too Deep (22 page)

“This is my heart, and it’s yours,” Miller said, his voice barely above a whisper as he tried to suppress his emotions.

Hadley opened her hand to a new addition for her charm bracelet. A sterling silver heart, encrusted with bright red gem-stones.

She blinked back tears.

“Thank you.”

Miller kissed her hand and fastened the charm to her bracelet before sliding in next to her. Hadley welcomed him with a soft smile. He brought her close, wrapping his long arms around her tiny frame. The comfort of his touch surprised her. She felt no anxiety in his warm embrace. Her arm rested on his stomach as his fingers glided softly up and down her skin. When his hand reached her wrist, his thumb lightly stroked the pencil thin scars. His breath hissed between his teeth. She refused to look up at him. He knew. Now he’d realize how wrong she was for him.

Miller brought her wrist to his lips and gently kissed the scars of her past. Her eyes burned as they filled with more damn tears she didn’t want to spill. The sob Hadley attempted to choke back heaved deep in her chest, suffocating her.

“Why?” Miller asked, his voice strained.

Hadley simply couldn’t explain to the man she loved how there had been a time in her life when she wanted nothing more than to die. How the smallest of things required more effort than she was capable of expending. How she had no compulsion to get out of bed every day and dredge through a life that society had deemed safe and appropriate. When in reality, it had been perverse, dangerous, and inexplicably inappropriate. It had been torture. She tried to take the easy way out, because attempting to keep her head above water and breathe had become impossible when she was continually being dragged under. She shook her head frantically against his chest, sobbing so violently her head began to throb.

His hand stroked the side of her head as he held her tighter.

“Shhh…Hadley. Please, don’t cry.”

Miller held her close for the nearly half an hour it took for her tears to end.

“Hadley?”

“I’m fine”

“Do you still want to?”

She honestly didn’t. Hadley hadn’t thought about it since the morning she met Mac.

“I have to know. Do you still want to harm yourself?”

“No.”

Her reply came out weak, but she did mean it.

“Are you speaking to someone about it?”

She didn’t want to answer, but he could find out if he wanted to. Miller had been nothing but gentle and kind to her. As much as it pained Hadley to admit something so personal, she couldn’t lie to him.

“Yes.”

“Who is it?”

“Why does it matter?”

“I need to know.”

“Dr. LeClair.”

“Ah… Good. Dr. LeClair is more than qualified.”

“And if he wasn’t?”

“Then I’d have you seeing someone else tomorrow.”

“And if I didn’t want to?”

“Don’t be coy with me. Some things are not negotiable. You’re mental health being one of them.”

“Oh.” Hadley also felt things that were not-negotiable, like sharing him with other women. “Why did you go to Thailand?”

His chest collapsed with a heavy sigh. Her intention wasn’t to provide Miller with a test, but her question was asked in faith. He asked Hadley to trust him, but was he ready to be honest with her about his past when he’d finally stopped her from running? Lying would mean losing her.

“Can we talk about this later?”

He opted for a copout rather than a lie.

“No! You asked me to trust you until you gave me a reason not to. Withholding things from me is a very good
reason
not to. I know you went there looking for a woman. Who is she?”

Miller let out a curse, knowing his cousin had spoken with her when he explicitly asked him not to. He squeezed her tight.

“My wife.”

Hadley sat up swiftly, releasing their embrace. The room closed in around her.

“What? You’re married?”

Miller tried to pull her back into his arms, but she resisted.

“Let me explain.” Her icy gaze shot back a warning. “We’ve been separated for over five years. I’ve been trying to divorce her for a while, but it’s complicated.”

Hadley relaxed. When Miller reached for her, she settled back into his side.

“Paul and I have been friends since grade school. After college, I introduced him to my cousin, Katherine. A year later they married. Paul has a half-sister named Theresa. She lived with her mother. I’d seen pictures of her, but we’d never met. At Paul’s wedding, he introduced us. We were inseparable after that.”

Hadley squirmed, not sure she wanted to hear anymore, but Miller kissed her head, calming her.

“She was wild and carefree. Genetti Industries was a huge success. I was on top of the world and had the woman I loved by my side. We took a trip to Atlantic City. After a night of drinking, I asked her to marry me, and she said yes. Other than family, we told no one we were married. She didn’t want to be scrutinized as Mrs. Genetti. It was difficult enough being my girlfriend. It was our intimate little secret.”

He swallowed against the dryness in his mouth, the next half of the story infinitely harder to share.

“We were young and far too irresponsible to deal with a wealthy lifestyle. We partied and drank too much. That led to smoking pot. I was content to smoke a joint now and again to take the edge off. Theresa craved the next big high and soon pot wasn’t enough. She turned to cocaine, but it didn’t provide the thrill she sought, and she moved on to heroine.”

He stopped and Hadley felt his chest heave. Miller bit into his fists. Hadley looked up and into the eyes of a man consumed by regret.

“Miller.”

“Give me a minute.” He scrubbed his face with his hand a few times. His emotions now under control, Miller continued. “Each evening when I looked into her eyes, she was no longer the woman I fell in love with. She was a desperate addict, willing to do anything, hurt anyone for a fix. She stole from me. She cheated on me. She borrowed money from Paul and the rest of her family when I tried to cut her off, until they ultimately wanted nothing more to do with her. As you can imagine, I blamed myself.”

“It wasn’t you fault.”

“It damn sure was. I started her on a destructive path, and I was having too much fun to see how much she changed until it was too late.”

“You were young. You couldn’t have known.”

“I should have, but despite everything, I was determined to fix it. I confronted her and begged her to go to rehab. She refused. I told her I wouldn’t give her another dime if she didn’t go. She was furious and told me she didn’t need my money. When she left me, her desperation for a fix grew, and she ended up near Coney Island, exchanging sexual favors for drugs. A week after she left me, I received a call from the hospital. She dearly died from an overdose. I told her how much I loved her and wanted to be with her. She entered rehab. I took her back, but she was never the same.” Miller exhaled slowly. “I ruined her.”

Hadley glanced up to a faraway look in his eyes.

“You saved her.”

“Hardly,” Miller huffed. “For a while, she seemed okay, but there was always a fire in her that couldn’t be controlled. She needed a fix. Drugs were out of the question if she wanted to stay with me. Her next addiction was sex. I wanted to please her. I tried to feed her desire. We had sex constantly. But, soon it was no longer about how often, but how many different ways. She wanted to be tied up and treated roughly, abused. I tried, but as her lover, I struggled with putting tenderness aside and making demands. I didn’t want to hurt her.” His voice broke and Miller paused, refusing to cry. “I wanted to love her gently, as a woman deserves, but she demanded violence—innocent spankings turned to brutal whippings, she was punishing herself, and I refused to be the one to execute the punishments. Her compromise was to bring a Dom into our bedroom, for me to watch. She told me it was so I could learn what she wanted. I refused to share her, and she left me. Over the next couple of years, I dated often and tried to forget her. She frequented BDSM clubs, sank back into drug use, and prostituted herself. Anytime trouble found her, I was there to bail her out.”

“You were trying to do right by her.”

He huffed again though an indignant smile. “I was trying to ease my conscience.”

“You still helped her.”

“I thought I was, but then I realized if I continued to enable her, she’d never change. A couple of months ago, I finally cut her off completely and she disappeared.”

“And you thought she went to Thailand?”

“I wasn’t sure. I paid a visit to her most recent Dom. He’s a slimly bastard with ties to the Russian mob. They run a substantial human trafficking ring out of the city. It took some threats, but he admitted she had been sold and sent to Thailand a few days prior, although he didn’t know her final destination.”

“Oh, my God! How could someone sell her?”

“She sold herself. She went willingly.”

“Why would she do that?”

“I did it. Don’t you see what I drove her to?”

“No, I don’t. As you told me moments ago, you have to forgive yourself. Maybe she doesn’t want to be rescued.”

“You sound like Paul.”

“Well, he’s right.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I came here to be close to you. Tell me about your life. Where you grew up and who your friends were.”

Hadley wasn’t ready to share, but it seemed she had something in common with the man she loved. If she expected Miller to forgive himself, she would have to do the same. She expected trust and honesty from him, and he’d been forthcoming. He deserved her honesty in return.

“I’m a poor girl from Brighton. As for friends, before Mac, I never had any.”

“I find that hard to believe. Kids always have friends.”

That stung a little, but Hadley knew hurting her wasn’t Miller’s intention.

“After my parents died, none of their family came to claim me. I bounced around from foster home to foster home. I guess I never settled anywhere long enough to make friends. And before they died, my father didn’t allow me to have them. He’d instilled a deep fear in me, and I avoided kids at school. I ate lunch alone and stayed inside for recess.”

Miller already harbored a profound hatred of her father after discovering details from Hadley’s past she’d yet to share with him. Hearing the pain in her voice while she spoke of the man sparked his anger and had his words coming out harsher than he intended.

“I don’t know why your mother allowed him to treat her child in such a manner! She should have left him!”

Hadley fidgeted and Miller whispered an apology for his clipped opinion.

“She did leave him briefly. I actually did make a friend during that time. It was short lived and validated my father’s denial of friends somehow. When we returned home, I hated how losing my friend felt. I think I decided then that I’d never let anyone in. That makes me pretty messed up, right?”

When Hadley glanced up, his eyes held no agreement, only adoration.

“No, it makes you delicate, but all the more beautiful. Tell me about your friend?”

Hadley smiled, remembering her sweet Giovanni.

“When my mother married my father, she was disowned. My father, being a poor Russian from Brighton was not suitable to marry a high-class Italian sweetheart from the Upper East Side. It wasn’t an issue of rich versus poor, though. My grandfather was old-school New York Italian. He took sides during a growing feud between native New Yorkers and the new immigrants from Russia. Sides were clearly defined, and how dare his daughter stand against him.”

“A regular West Side Story,” Miller interjected to lighten the tone.

“You get the idea, but with an ending more tragic. They were young and she was pregnant. She left her parents’ home and they didn’t speak again until I was seven. My mother realized she should’ve listened to her parents. My father was physically and emotionally abusive. After a beating that nearly took her life, she was encouraged to speak to a counselor. She went behind my father’s back to do it, but after the visit, she packed us up, and we took a cab to my grandparents'. With stipulations, they took us in. It was summer and I was allowed to play in the neighborhood and the park. I remember the freedom consuming me as I explored the entire neighborhood. One afternoon, some boys took to picking on me. That’s when I met Giovanni. He sent them all running after threatening them to leave me alone. It turned out, he was visiting his grandmother, but his family lived nearby. My grandparents were friends with her and knew Giovanni well. He was older than me by four or five years, but he didn’t care. We were two peas in a pod. I shared everything with him. All the things I could never tell my mother, like how much I hated my father. Then one night, I heard arguing downstairs while I tried to sleep.” Her voice trailed off slightly before she screamed. “She took me back to him. To that monster, but worse than that she took away my only friend. I never saw Giovanni again after that and I hated her for it. But then she was gone and…”

“Oh, Love.” He kissed her hair. “I’m so sorry.”

Miller understood her pain, his possibly buried deeper, but he also had demons from his childhood. He didn’t press her with any more questions. Instead, he listened to her heavy breathing as it transitioned to shallow breaths before she fell asleep in his arms.

Miller
Giovanni
Genetti held his love close, thinking how incredibly sad it was he’d been
her only friend
.