The Foster Girls #4: Willow

Chapter 8: Decker

That night, I paced the beach outside the cottage, forcing myself not to head over to Willow's and demand she talk to me. Why I felt the need to explain the entire situation to her I couldn't understand myself. Was it just to make myself feel better about what I'd done to her? Did I honestly think it would lessen her pain if she knew the reasons behind my actions?

I knew I was fucked up. The years of abuse, the need to not let my father win had driven me from the first time he'd hit me. Looking back, every single relationship I'd had with a woman had been unhealthy and aimed at getting back at him.

He'd hated Nurie from the moment he'd met her, calling her a grasping whore, assuring me I'd regret having her in my life.

And, as a result, I'd allowed her to come in and out of my life because I knew it bugged the hell out of him.

After a while, she became a nasty habit and the turmoil she brought into my life brought me a strange sense of familiarity with the turmoil of my childhood.

Never had I loved her. I honestly didn't have that emotion in my repertoire. She also understood that I was going to fuck around on her; we fought about it, but every time we did, I told her if she didn't like it, she could leave. She'd leave, then make sure I knew she was fucking around with a new toy and she'd find out who I was screwing around with and warn the women that I always came back to her and they shouldn't get too comfortable.

Rinse, repeat for eight years. It was unhealthy.

But the angry sex with her had been raw and intense and those emotions were within my comfort zone.

She'd never given me peace.

Not like Willow had.

Never.

Willow brought up feelings in me that I had no idea what they were or what they meant. It had happened both immediately and gradually. I'd immediately felt a connection with her when I saw her at the bar the first time. Something deep within me responded to her.

Then as I'd spent time with her, something happened to me that had never happened before: I wanted to spend more time with her. Some part of me, maybe some shred of decency that hadn't been destroyed by my father, kept me from her bed. She was the first woman who pulled me in without sex, captivating me not with what was between her legs but with her mind and personality.

I liked how she saw the world, how easily she laughed, how she found the good in everyone, in every situation. It was naïve and child-like, but it drew me in. With Willow, I felt clean, pure...good. The churning emotions inside me settled and I felt balanced.

But the darkness inside me wouldn't be conquered completely by Willow and when I felt myself teetering on the edge of...happiness?...I sought out Nurie or other women and fucked them until the darkness returned. Joy and light were not for someone like me, no matter how much my soul wanted them.

Twisting the ring on my finger, I thought about our wedding day and how shocked I'd been that she'd bought a ring for me.

When had anyone given me a gift that wasn't bought with my money?

"Let me have your card, baby. I want to get you something." Nurie had uttered those words to me more times than I could count.

Not Willow. She'd never once used my credit cards, never once asked me for money or for some help with her bills, never hinted that I should buy her a new car or some jewelry or anything.

I took off the ring for the first time since she'd slid it onto my finger and looked at it closely. Something was engraved on the inside. I peered at it.

In your eyes, I found home.

Stunned, I realized why she wanted this ring back. Even more than the words I love you, this statement told me how deeply she felt for me. One night when we'd been talking, she told me what her mother had promised her, how someday she'd find home in a man.

Guilt stabbed me like a knife in the heart. I'd made her believe she'd found home, made her think she'd found her forever. Just like my father, I'd damaged another person without a thought as to the pain I was inflicting. Pain didn't have to be delivered just with fists.

I didn't deserve Willow. Someone as tainted as I was deserved someone like Nurie. That was the kind of woman I should be with, someone who was as damaged as I was, who I wouldn't drag into the darkness with me because she was already there. If I kept Willow in my life, I'd eventually extinguish her light because that's just who I was.

I wasn't good enough to be her home.

I needed to let her go.

But I was never returning the ring.