Chapter 415

• If I stop now, I’ll never have the courage again. If I let myself stop and think about what I’m telling him, I’ll never find this voice again … ever. These memories will only be driven down deeper inside of me, never to see the light again.
• “Even when I was too young to know what sex was, I started sleeping with a baseball bat I bought with money from my paper route. I bought it because I knew the men wouldn’t stop coming, and I hated what they tried to do to me,” I continue slowly. “I ended up in protective services by the time I was eleven; a neighbor reported my mother’s boyfriend for beating her up, hearing the screams almost daily. You would think that losing me for a year to a horrendous life in a children’s home would change her, but I came back to exactly what I’d left behind.”
• His thumb moves across my cheek, wiping away fresh tears, and I tilt my face into his touch. Still, he stays quiet and listens intently, barely making a sound.