Breaking Down Our Walls by Gwynn Marssen

Author:Gwynn Marssen [Marssen, Gwynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi

THE FIRST few days were uncomfortable as hell. Owen started to knock instead of barging in and didn’t spend half the time in my house as before. Our conversations were filled with painful silences and were mostly about Mug’s and Oreo’s escapades. I found myself needing to touch him, even more than before. So many times I had to stop myself from brushing his hair out of his face or pulling him into a hug. The way I vividly remembered how his body felt, his lips under my mouth, his taste, and his smell didn’t help.

I was about to go crazy when Owen caught me pulling my hand back just before putting it on his shoulder. His eyes flicked from my hand, to my face, and he looked at me with narrowed eyes.

“I—” I started.

“I…. I don’t mind you touching me.” Owen seemed to mean it as a statement, but it came out as a question instead. The guarded look in his eyes was obvious. I kept silent, believing that anything I said would be wrong.

When I didn’t get a reaction, I tried something I hadn’t tried before. “I think I need to know what happened to you.”

This time the long silence wasn’t uncomfortable because I could see he was thinking. I left him to it, and went inside to get some coffee and the amazing chocolate-chip muffins Owen had bought on the grocery run earlier in the day.

When I came back, Owen had settled on the picnic table. He stared at Oreo and Mug who were chasing each other on the open spot in front of the house. I handed him the coffee and the muffin and sat down beside him. For a while we just looked at the devilish cat and the not-so-clever dog that sat on his haunches looking thoroughly surprised when Oreo managed to climb a tree.

“When I met Victor he was the most handsome and charming man I ever laid eyes on.” Owen broke the silence suddenly. “He lavished me with attention, something that I was really hungry for. There’s a lot to be said for growing up in a large family, but attention was always limited. Victor knew exactly what to say to charm me, or to charm anyone, for that matter. On any public occasion, he was so nice and friendly to everyone, but whenever we came home afterward he completely decimated them. At first that bothered me, especially when it was my friends or family that he ridiculed. But somehow he made me doubt myself and the people I liked. He was so strong verbally that he somehow managed to convince me I was wrong in all my opinions. Very subtly he made me feel like I was ugly and stupid and wasn’t able to make any decisions myself. He made me need his approval for just about everything, made it so I tried to please him in anything. He wasn’t violent, not at first, not until we were already living together.

“Whenever I did something that wasn’t good enough in his opinion, he ignored me, sometimes for days.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.